What's a Good Perfect Square Score? Percentiles Explained

A good perfect square score is anything above 65% — based on real scores submitted to Score It High, that puts you in the top quarter of players. Most attempts land between 20% and 50%, a shape that clearly reads as a square starts around 50%, and past 75% (top 10%) your corners are close to a true 90° with all four sides within a hair of equal length.

• Below 20%: early attempts — sides are uneven or a corner rounds off into a curve.
• 20–50%: the typical range — most submitted scores land here.
• 50–65%: solid — top quarter, ahead of most of the field.
• 65–75%: very good — climbing toward the top 10%.
• 75%+: excellent to elite — top 10%, climbing to top 1% past 85%.

Want to see where your own attempt lands? Play the draw a perfect square game and check your score against the breakdown below.

You drew a square, the number came back, and now you want to know if it's actually good. Here's an honest breakdown, calibrated against real scores submitted on Score It High rather than a guess at what "looks close enough."

Perfect Square Score Guide

Below 20% — Early attempts

The shape is recognisable as an attempt at a square, but the sides are noticeably uneven or a corner has rounded off into a curve instead of a turn. Almost everyone starts here on their first few tries — the specific technique for a sharp 90° corner is not something most people have ever practised.

20–35% — Getting there

Someone looking at this would call it a square without hesitation, but the proportions drift — one side runs noticeably longer than the opposite one, or a corner is closer to 70° than 90°. This is a common range for a second or third attempt.

35–50% — Average

This band holds the median submitted score. The four sides are reasonably close in length and the corners are recognisable turns rather than curves, but there's still visible wobble along at least one edge.

50–65% — Solid

Ahead of roughly half the field. The edges are close to straight, the corners are close to square, and the shape closes cleanly back to the starting point. This is usually where deliberate technique — slowing down at each corner instead of trying to carry speed through the turn — starts to show.

65–75% — Very good

You're now ahead of roughly three-quarters of submitted scores, climbing toward the top 10% by the upper end of this band. The four sides are within a small margin of equal length and the corners are sharp and consistent with each other, not just one good corner among three sloppy ones.

75%+ — Elite

Top 10%, and it gets rarer fast from there — 85%+ is roughly top 1% of submitted scores. The shape is essentially indistinguishable from a true square by eye at this range; any remaining flaw needs to be measured to detect. Getting here consistently takes real, repeated practice at the corner-pause technique.

How the Score Actually Grades You

The scoring algorithm fits the best possible square to your stroke — any size, any rotation — and then checks your drawing against that fitted square on four separate things: how far your line wanders from a perfectly straight edge at each point, whether the four sides come out the same length rather than drifting into a rectangle, whether you actually traced all four sides instead of mostly redrawing one or two, and whether the stroke closes back near where it started. A high score needs all four to hold up together — nailing three corners and blowing the fourth caps your score even if the rest looks great.

Corners Were Supposed to Help. They Don't, Much.

The common assumption is that squares should score higher than circles on average — corners give your hand a place to stop, reset, and aim the next side, while a circle has to be sustained in one continuous curve with no such checkpoint. Looking at real submitted scores, that doesn't hold up: the median best square score is close to the median best circle score, not meaningfully higher. Corners hand you an easier problem (hold a straight line) but a harder one at the same time (stop exactly at 90° while still moving) — and the second problem is expensive enough to cancel most of the advantage. We dig into why in why drawing a perfect square is so hard.

The leaderboard keeps your personal best. Submit every attempt — your score can only go up, and watching where you land against these ranges is the fastest way to tell if a technique change actually worked.