I suppose these are just the necessary accessories for a simple one dice game: - the dice - the box where from which the dice is tossed Both of them should be fair. So if you control both of them, you control everything. Here are some examples from the OED which show how the expression developped: "1678 Butler Hud. iii. ii. 1068 We threw the Box and Dice away, Before y'had lost us at foul Play. 1693 in Dryden's Juvenal xiv. (1697) 342 If the Father, says Juvenal, love the Box and Dice, the Boy will be given to an itching Elbow. 1709 Prior Cupid & Ganymede 45 A Sharper, that with Box and Dice Draws in young Deities to Vice. 1711 Puckle Club 22 note, Supposing both box and dice fair, gamesters have the top, the peep, eclipse, thumbing. 1778 C. Jones Hoyle's Games Impr. 209 The Game of Hazard_may be played by any Number of Persons. He who takes the Box and Dice throws a Main, that is to say, a Chance for the Company, which must be above four, and not exceed nine [etc.]. 1781 Westm. Mag. IX. 604 Give the Beau-monde impertinent advice, Proscribe Vingt-une! prohibit box and dice!> 1888 _R. Boldrewood' Robbery under Arms I. x. 118, I could see him_watching me when I put on the whole box and dice of the telegraph business. He _dropped', I could see." Source and further information: http://groups.google.com.au/group/alt.usage.english/browse_thread/thread/7191ba4f37296408/8b857b48010ea3dc?&hl=en#8b857b48010ea3dc Further information: http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/archives/archive55/newposts/510/topic510624.shtm http://plateaupress.com.au/wfw/kit.htm http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2002/685647.htm

WHY can't we just say the whole thing? Why do we have to embellish with phrases like the whole box and dice, the whole nine yards and the whole kit and caboodle? This has a military origin. It is certainly multinational, because kit is a British military term for equipment, and it looks as if it was added to the phrase as reinforcement. Kit in this sense is listed in Captain Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811). Caboodle comes from the Dutch boedel, "estate" or "property" and was first noted in the United States in 1699, according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang: "Elisabeth had the Boedel of Jan Verbeck, desceased (sic), in hands." Random lists the whole caboodle from 1848 and the whole kit and caboodle from 1888. http://plateaupress.com.au/wfw/kit.htm There are various 'the whole' expressions which derive from America - 'the whole ball of wax', 'the whole nine yards', 'the whole box of dice', 'the whole shooting match', 'the whole enchilada', 'the whole kit and caboodle' etc. Whilst these by and large refer to real objects, none of them represent 'wholeness' and they have just been tacked on to 'the whole' to make catchy phrases. 'Shebang' was also used that way - and that the fact that people using it didn't know what a shebang was didn't really matter. It was simply a colourful way of saying 'thing'. http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/480141 The deception of ‘the whole box and dice,’ whereby you either have to accept the whole package, no questions asked, or by implication you’ve rejected the lot and you have to look elsewhere. It’s about the list we keep in our heads by which we judge those questions. It’s about the whole box and dice, the nice neat package which we bundle our faith up into, and by which we filter out every question, every idea, every passage of Scripture or word of prophecy which doesn’t fit within our nice neat framework, for fear that if we actually asked that question or read that Scripture, the whole lot would fall down like a house of cards.