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Dash
Board · Classics · plays in your browser, no download
Four pieces each, a cross-shaped track, and a die. Land where he is and he goes back to the beginning. It is the simplest game in this collection and the one that produces the most shouting.
Where it comes from
The original is pachisi, from India, where it has been played for well over a thousand years — references go back at least to the sixth century. The board is a cloth cross, and the dice were not dice: they were cowrie shells, thrown and counted by how many landed mouth up. The name comes from pachīs, twenty-five, the highest throw.
The best-known story about it concerns the Mughal emperor Akbar, who is said to have had a pachisi court laid out in stone at Fatehpur Sikri and played it with members of his household standing on the squares as the pieces. The courtyard is still there.
The British version arrived in the eighteen-nineties, patented by Alfred Collier and sold as Ludo — Latin for I play. Sources disagree on whether the patent was 1891 or 1896. What Collier changed is clear enough: the shells became an ordinary six-sided die and the cloth became a small square board, which is the version that went round the world and came back as Parcheesi, Mens-erger-je-niet, Non t’arrabbiare and a dozen others.
How to play
| Getting out | You need a six to put a piece on the track. |
|---|---|
| Another go | A six earns you another throw. |
| Sending home | Land exactly on an enemy piece and it goes back to its yard and starts again. |
| Coming home | The last stretch needs an exact throw. Too many and you do not move. |
| Winning | All four pieces home. |
There is more choice in it than it looks. With four pieces on the track and one number to spend, which piece you move is a real decision, and it is almost always a decision about who can reach you next turn.
Our version
The short rules — a six to come out, another throw for a six, exact landing to come home — and the die rolled honestly, which is worth saying out loud about a game this old.
Three things that help
Count the six squares behind you. An enemy piece one to six squares back can reach you this turn. Everything else on the board is temporarily harmless.
Do not get all four out early. Four pieces on the track is four targets. Two moving well beats four moving badly.
Running home is not always right. A piece parked just in front of his yard exit is worth more than a piece three squares from home, because it is standing in the only doorway he has.