Why a garden?

A Ludo board already looks like a garden from above. There is a cross of paths, a square plot in each corner and something round in the middle. So here the corners are flower beds, the paths are stepping stones and home is a big flower with one petal for each colour.

The other players are garden animals. The Snail moves any token it likes. The Rabbit goes after captures. The Owl works out which squares are in danger before it moves. Beat one and the next comes out to play.

A bit of real Ludo history

Ludo is the English version of pachisi, the old race game of India. Pachisi is played on a cloth cross, and the moves come from throwing cowrie shells. The English game kept the cross and the race home, made the board a printed square, and used a single cube die instead of shells.

Most histories give 1896 as the year Ludo was patented in England, though at least one account dates the first patent application a few years earlier. The name is Latin for “I play”. By the 1920s boxed sets were being made in England with a cross-shaped track, one die and counters in red, yellow, blue and green, much like the boards sold today.

Pachisi travelled in other directions too. In the United States a version sold as Parcheesi was on the market by the 1870s, and in Germany Josef Friedrich Schmidt made a simple version around 1907 that became Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, which means roughly “don’t get cross”. The rules differ a little from country to country. So do the house rules from family to family.

If you want the older game, quickBOP also has Pachisi, played with cowrie shells on a cloth cross.

How to play our version

• Players: two to four, in any mix of you, friends sharing one device, and computer players. Each colour has 4 tokens, or 2 in a Quick game.
• Coming out: you need a 6 to move a token from your flower bed onto your start square, the one with the arrow.
• Moving: tokens go round the garden the way the clock goes. After one lap they turn up their own coloured path to the flower. If you can move, you must.
• Sixes: a 6 gives you another roll. Roll three 6s in a row and your turn ends on the spot.
• Capturing: land on another colour and its token goes back to its bed. Two tokens of one colour on a square are both sent back.
• Safe squares: the four start squares and the four stars. Nobody is captured there, and different colours can share them.
• Home: the last roll must be exact. The first player with every token home wins.

Under House rules you can let any big enough roll finish, turn off the three-6s rule, or give an extra roll for a capture or a token home. Some families also let two tokens make a block that nobody can pass. We left that one out.

Tips

Watch the six squares behind you. A token 1 to 6 squares in front of an enemy has a 1 in 6 chance of being hit on their next roll. Further away than that, they need a 6 first, so the danger drops a lot.

Use the stars. Each star is 8 squares past a start square. A token parked there can wait while an enemy goes by.

Get tokens out early. A 6 is your only way out of the bed. With more tokens on the paths, you have more choices for every roll after that.

Your turn

The garden is at the top of this page and the Snail is waiting in its bed. Roll for a 6.