Snakes and Ladders is the world's most democratic board game: a race from square 1 to square 100 in which the die makes every decision and every player — four years old or ninety — has exactly the same chance. It is also far older and stranger than the nursery classic it became. Here are the rules, the edge cases people argue about, and the story behind the board.
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Be the first player to reach square 100. The board is a 10×10 grid numbered 1 to 100 in a winding boustrophedon path — left to right along one row, right to left along the next — scattered with ladders that lift you forward and snakes that slide you back.
The ending is where family arguments are born, so let's be precise. In the widely played exact-landing rule (the one TAPSIXTY uses), you must land on square 100 exactly. Overshoot and you bounce back by the leftover pips: rolling a 5 from square 98 takes you to 100 and then three squares back to 97 — where, in the cruellest boards, a snake may be waiting. Some households play a gentler variant where any roll that reaches or passes 100 wins; agree before you start, and you'll save a friendship.
Completely — and that's the charm. With no decisions to make, Snakes and Ladders is what mathematicians call a Markov chain: the game plays itself, and the players are simply passengers with allegiances. A typical single-player trip up a standard board takes around forty rolls, but the variance is enormous — lightning games and forty-minute epics come from the same board. The absence of skill is exactly what makes it the fairest game on the shelf, and the snake lurking near the finish is what makes it unforgettable.
The game began centuries ago in India as Moksha Patam, a teaching tool dressed as entertainment: the ladders were virtues — generosity, faith, humility — and the snakes were vices, each fall a moral lesson that a single lapse can undo long patient progress. Tellingly, the old boards had more snakes than ladders. When the game reached Victorian Britain it kept the mechanics, swapped the theology for nursery decoration, and set out to conquer every toy cupboard on earth. The TAPSIXTY board plays the classic modern layout — 8 ladders, 8 snakes, and no chained falls.
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Roll, move, climb ladders from their foot, slide down snakes from their head. A 6 rolls again. First to land exactly on 100 wins.
You bounce back by the excess — a 5 from square 98 lands you on 97. Only an exact landing wins.
None at all — it's pure chance, which is why every player has an equal shot and why it's perfect for switching off.
Ancient India — it began as Moksha Patam, a morality game where ladders were virtues and snakes were vices.