How to play Snakes and Ladders

Every player has one token, and every token starts off the board. On your turn you roll one die and walk your token that many squares along a track numbered 1 to 100. Stop at the foot of a ladder and you climb it. Stop on a snake's head and you slide down to its tail. Reach square 100 and the game is over.

None of that is a decision. The die says how far you go and the board says what happens when you get there, so a child of six and their grandmother are exactly as good at it. That is the game rather than a hole in it, and it is why this is the one game on the site with no difficulty setting. A bot cannot play the only legal move any better than you can.

What does change from table to table is the house rules, and all of them sit on the game's own page before you start. Whether you need a six to come on, whether a six earns you another roll, what three sixes cost, and whether you have to hit the last square exactly.

A hundred squares in a ten by ten grid. The numbers run left to right along the bottom row, 1 to 10, then turn and run right to left along the row above, 11 to 20, and keep folding back and forth like that up to 100. So 11 sits directly above 10, and square 1 and square 100 end up in the same column at opposite ends of the board.

Nineteen jumps are drawn over the squares of the printed board, nine ladders and ten snakes. The ladders climb from 1 to 38, 4 to 14, 9 to 31, 21 to 42, 28 to 84, 36 to 44, 51 to 67, 71 to 91 and 80 to 100. The snakes drop from 16 to 6, 47 to 26, 49 to 11, 56 to 53, 62 to 19, 64 to 60, 87 to 24, 93 to 73, 95 to 75 and 98 to 78. That is the board most people picture when they picture the game, and it is the one the app deals you by default.

Choose A fresh board instead and a new layout is drawn with the same shape, nine ladders and ten snakes, each of them spanning between 3 and 42 squares. No square is ever both the head of one jump and the tail of another, so nothing can ever drop you straight onto a second one. The layout comes from the match seed, which means everybody at an online table is looking at the same picture, and a new one is drawn for every game you play.

Every token begins off the board, in the pen: the row of slots below the board and a little left of centre. On the standard table it waits there until its owner rolls a six.

A six brings the token on at square 1, not at square 6. The six is the key to the door rather than a move, so nothing is walked with it, and it hands the roll straight back so the turn is not spent. Any other number leaves the token in the pen and the turn passes. The status line tells you what you are waiting for.

Coming on with a six ignores whatever is drawn on square 1. On the printed board that square is the foot of the ladder to 38, and taking it on the way in would fire every token up to 38 the moment it appeared, in every game, and the bottom two rows would never be played at all. The token is placed on square 1. It does not land there.

Set Coming on to Any roll starts you off and none of that applies. The first roll is an ordinary walk out of the pen, so a 3 puts you on square 3, and a 1 puts you on square 1 and does climb the ladder to 38 with it.

By default a six moves your token and then hands you the die again. Two sixes and a four is sixteen squares in one turn. Switch that setting off and a six is simply a roll of six, and the turn passes like any other.

Three sixes in a row in one turn is where the die turns on you. On the standard table you lose the whole turn. Nothing is walked for the third six, your token goes back to where it stood when the turn began, and the turn passes even though the roll was a six. Back to where the turn began means all of it: a token that walked 3 to 9 to 15 on its first two sixes goes back to 3, not to 9.

And if the turn began in the pen, the pen is where the token goes. Come on with your first six, walk with your second, throw a third, and you are off the board again at a table that is not even playing Back off the board. Choose that setting instead and a third six sends your token off the board from wherever it had climbed to. Either way, at a table that needs a six to come on, that token now has to buy the door a second time.

A third six can never win a game. The check happens before the walk is worked out, so a token on 94 that rolls its third six does not go home, it goes backwards. The rule also needs A six rolls again switched on to bite at all. With that off, the only roll that ever hands the die back is the six that brings a token on, so a streak gets to two and never to three. The lobby greys the row out rather than hiding it, so you can see why it is doing nothing.

On the standard table you must land on square 100 exactly. A roll that would carry you past it moves you nowhere at all, and you sit where you are until the number you need comes up. Nothing bounces back off the end here. From 97, only a 3 will do, and a 1 walks you onto 98, where the printed board keeps a snake that drags you back to 78.

A blocked roll is still a roll. A six that overshoots counts towards your streak and hands you the die again just the same, so a token parked on 97 can roll three sixes, move not one square for any of them, and then be sent back by the three sixes rule anyway.

Set Finishing to Reaching or passing 100 wins and a 5 from 97 gets you home. Either way a ladder counts as arriving. The printed board has one from 80 straight to 100, and climbing it wins as surely as walking the last square.

The game stops the instant the first token is home. In a three or four player game nobody plays on for second place. A six that wins does not roll again either, because there is nothing left to roll for.