snakes and ladders

British

noun

(functioning as singular) a board game in which players move counters along a series of squares according to throws of a dice. A ladder provides a short cut to a square nearer the finish and a snake obliges a player to return to a square nearer the start

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Fighting Covid-19 sometimes feels like playing a game of snakes and ladders; move up three spaces, then something unexpected comes along and we all fall back a bit.

From BBC • Jul. 5, 2021

“Things are going to be thrown at you on days like this, but it felt like one domino after another, like snakes and ladders, and I kept hitting the snakes today.”

From Reuters • Jul. 29, 2019

The school was three stories tall, with hallways that looped on themselves and stairways connecting the floors like a giant game of snakes and ladders.

From The New Yorker • Jan. 13, 2014

Euro snakes and ladders THE euro’s agony is coming full circle.

From Economist • Jul. 12, 2012

Laila got her to play snakes and ladders, and they ate shavings from blocks of dark chocolate, one of the few things they shared a common taste for.

From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023