What is "across the board"

Usage examples of "across the board".

If everyone here knew his present thoughts, if that message in greenish cipher that moved across the board represented the read-outs of Lyle Wynant, it would be mental debris alone that caused him humiliation, all the unwordable rubble, the glass, rags and paper of his tiny indefinable manias.

Since then the increases in catch size across the board had been phenomenal.

But then your father's queen charged across the board, straight toward us, her mount breathing fire that singed us from several squares away.

His eyes would move across the board three or four times, then his hand would reach out and without a moment's hesitation move a piece with thumb and index finger (all too often lifting off one of Ramage's pieces with the ring and little finger at the same time) and he'd wait without fidgeting while Ramage tried to think up a counter-move, often aided by Southwick.

Now one of his supporting monsters slithered across the board and, after a brief battle, threw Chewbacca's defenses wide open.

He found Banks busily scrawling something in chalk across the board outside cell number one.