Chutes & Ladders / Snakes & Ladders

Chutes and Ladders is a popular board game for young children. Players compete to traverse a series of 100 consecutively numbered squares laid out in a 10×10 grid.  Each turn a player spins a dial, and moves their token forward the number of squares indicated.  Some squares, however, are connected to ladders and chutes.  Upon landing on a square at a ladder’s foot, one then move ones piece ahead several squares or rows to the ladder’s terminus.  Conversely, landing on a chute square requires the player to move their token back several spaces or rows.  The game has a mild moral message, with ladders and chutes corresponding to simple virtues and ‘vices’ relevant to young children.  For example, in the square at the foot of one ladder a young student is shown reading a book, with the ladder’s end showing the student wearing a graduation cap and gown.

The earliest ancestor was a game played in ancient China (circa 5th century) called shengguan tu (Table of Bureaucratic Promotion). The purpose of this game was to simulate the advancement of a civil servant within the complex administrative bureaucracy of the Chinese state; acquisition of virtues and abandonment of vice — in ways aligned with Confucian philosophy — were understood as central to this.

Subject ID: 183457