Snakes and Ladders

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Snakes and Ladders is an ancient Indian board game, orginally known as Moksha Patam. The historic version had its roots in morality lessons, on which a player's progression up the board represented a life journey complicated by virtues (ladders) and vices (snakes). 

Today it is a classic game. There are also variations of the game and rules that have been developed over the years.

It is played on a game board with numbered, grided squares. A number of "snakes" and "ladders" are pictured on the board, each connecting two specific board squares.

The object of the game is to navigate one's game piece in accordance to die (single dice) rolls, starting from the bottom square of the board to the finish (top of the board square), helped by climbing ladders, but hindered by falling down snakes.

Players: 2 or more
Skills: Counting, Observation
Game Play: 

  • Each player starts with a token on the starting square (usually the first grid square in the bottom left corner)

  • Players take turns rolling a single die to move their token by the number of squares indicated by the die rolled. 

  • Tokens follow a fixed route marked on the gameboard which usually follows from the bottom to the top of the playing area, passing once through every square. 

  • If, on completion of a move, a player's token lands on the lower-numbered end of a "ladder", the player moves the token up to the ladder's higher-numbered square. If the player lands on the higher-numbered square of a "snake", the token must be moved down to the snake's lower-numbered square.

  • If a 6 is rolled, the player, after moving, immediately rolls again for another turn; otherwise play passes to the next player in turn. 

  • The player who is first to bring their token to the last square of the track is the winner.

A skills-based mathematical variation from Wikipedia:

"In the book Winning Ways the authors propose a variant which they call Adders-and-Ladders which, unlike the original game, involves skill. Instead of tokens for each player, there is a store of indistinguishable tokens shared by all players. The illustration has five tokens (and a five-by-five board). There is no die to roll; instead, the player chooses any token and moves it one to four spaces. Whoever moves the last token to the Home space (i.e. the last number) wins."


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