Snakes And Ladders Game

The game of Snakes and Ladders is quite simple. Every player starts with a token at square one and rolls a die. The token is then advanced by the number of squares indicated by the roll of the die. The winner is the first player to reach the end of the route, which follows an ox-plow pattern from one end of the board to the other.

If the token ends up on the lower part of a ladder, as indicated by the number of that square being smaller than the number on the square at the other end of the ladder, the player can go directly to the square at the top of that ladder. Conversely, if the token lands on the higher-numbered square at one end of the ladder, the token has to be put at the other end of the ladder, effectively taking the player backwards in the progress of the game. This is one of the aspects of the Snakes and Ladders game that children find exciting, because no one can be entirely sure that they are going to win until the very end.

If a player rolls a 6, the player can roll the die again after he or she has moved. Other than that, the players simply take straightforward turns. If a player rolls three consecutive sixes, they go back to square one and cannot resume the game until she or she has rolled another 6.

The game of Snakes and Ladders has a number of worldwide variations. In the United States, the game is essentially the same but is known as Chutes and Ladders, in which chutes replace the snakes, but the essential function is the same: it takes the player backwards in the game. The most common version of Snakes and Ladders in Britain is the Spear's Games version, which involves a 10 x 10 board. There has also been a Canadian version that replaced the snakes with toboggan runs. When the Canada Games Company closed, the version by Milton Bradley (Hasbro) gained popularity.

Not many people know that the game of Snakes and Ladders actually started in India, and was originally a morality-based game known as Vaikuntapaali or Paramapada Sopanam ("ladder to salvation"). This explains the presence of snakes and ladders in this game: the ladders represent good deeds and the snakes represent sins -- hence the ladders and snakes figuratively represent moral ascent and descent respectively. Significantly, in this original version of the game the number of snakes was greater than the number of ladders, indicating that following the path of righteousness and life is much more tricky than succumbing to sin. The game ultimately ended up in Victorian England around 1892 and subsequently became an extremely popular classic to be played by children on rainy days. The game of Snakes and Ladders was also eventually introduced to the United States by Milton Bradley in 1943.

Photo used under Creative Commons from zoonie