Talk:Snakes and ladders

Impartial game
In the book Winning Ways the authors show how to treat Snakes and Ladders as an impartial game in combinatorial game theory even though it is very far from a natural fit to this category. To this end they make a few rule changes such as allowing players to move any counter any number of spaces, and declaring the winner as the player who gets the last counter home. Unlike the original game, this version, which they call Adders-and-Ladders, involves skill.

I don't mind this anecdote, despite being a tad discursive, but the second any defies comprehension, as it seems to invite either non-termination or triviality. Any number that the chance might have allowed (e.g. 1–6)? Even under this assumption, I'm still struggling to see how this doesn't automatically lead to stalemate, as players run to some available snake rather than accept a bad outcome. (Is there a three-repetition rule?) &mdash; MaxEnt 18:58, 20 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I should add that one reason I don't mind this discursive anecdote is that I did change the rules of many games I played as a child, if it seemed to increase the skill requirement. That was the game outside the game, for any competitive, mathematically inclined child. If you bought the game as sold (with its official rules), you got the other for free (invention of house rules). This was not a separable aspect of games from that era (with modern computer games, the rules are hard-coded in software, which is a substantially different terms of engagement—software typically offers more complex grooves, but with less flexibility to bust out, where busting out the right way is the deepest challenge of all; the Hex (board game) looks simple, but it was invented by John Nash, precisely because it's quite deep, mathematically, and even modern computers struggle to determine optimal strategy for small boards). &mdash; MaxEnt 19:08, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

"In the original game..." Which original; and where do the snakes and ladders go?
This section is a bit ambiguous. Does "the original game" actually mean the Victorian England version? This should probably be clarified, as reading the article as a whole, "original" would surely mean one of the Indian versions (which).

Of the hundreds of different images of snakes and ladders boards, including vintage Victorian ones, I haven't seen any that match:

"In the original game the squares of virtue are: Faith (12), Reliability (51), Generosity (57), Knowledge (76), and Asceticism (78). The squares of vice or evil are: Disobedience (41), Vanity (44), Vulgarity (49), Theft (52), Lying (58), Drunkenness (62), Debt (69), Murder (73), Rage (84), Greed (92), Pride (95), and Lust (99).[8]"

Are we sure the reference is correct? If so, we should complete the description by saying the end points of the ladders and snakes (eg the Faith ladder starts at 12, but where does it go to?).

ReferenceHunter (talk) 07:47, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 14 December 2020

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved as proposed. After extended time for discussion, consensus is now clear. BD2412 T 00:16, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

– Per MOS:GAMECAPS and the recently closed RM discussion at Talk:Fuzzy duck. Note that for Never Have I Ever, this would be a revert of a move of 30 March 2014‎ by, who said "proper noun" when moving the page. —&hairsp;BarrelProof (talk) 20:21, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Snakes and Ladders → Snakes and ladders
 * Hounds and Jackals → Hounds and jackals
 * Alak Dolak → Alak dolak
 * Never Have I Ever → Never have I ever
 * The Priest of the Parish → The priest of the parish
 * Twenty Questions → Twenty questions

More history of undiscussed capping – the title Snakes and ladders was capped in 2011 after an undiscussed technical request compared it to a trademarked game name. Dicklyon (talk) 03:26, 17 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Support all are generic namely aren't specific entities with this name. Note that there is already a discussion at Talk:The Dozens involving moving to "Dozens" but looks like a SNOW not moved though the alternative Dozens (game) might be successful.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 20:25, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not noticing the other RM. —&hairsp;BarrelProof (talk) 21:05, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Since this was flagged as a malformed request at Requested moves, I removed the request here to move The Dozens → The dozens. —&hairsp;BarrelProof (talk) 21:47, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * since The Dozens discussion has been closed as not moved it is worth adding it back to this discussion? Though I'd note in small text that you've done so or do you think a separate RM should be filed to also see if it should be moved to Dozens (game).  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 11:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It might confuse people to add it back into this RM after 5 days of open discussion have already gone by, so I prefer to have a separate RM for that. —&hairsp;BarrelProof (talk) 17:02, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose all - As proper nouns. These are not truly "generic". Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:10, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It was noted above that you made the same claim in 2014 when capping one of these. But there's no evidence in support of your "proper noun" rationale. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 *  Oppose (Snakes and Ladders specific)  (edit: thought this closed already per snow. Even though sources concur, and some forms of upper-case will survive, this does seem to have enough lower-case arguments in its favor), per proper name and the sources and text on this page. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:35, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * At least 6 of the cited sources use lowercase; many don't use it at all, and many are not accessible online. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose . As Randy Kryn noted above, most sources cited use the current capitalisation. JezGrove (talk) 23:10, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Question Do the "oppose"s here also disagree with the outcome at Talk:Fuzzy duck? I'm hoping for consistency in the outcome. —&hairsp;BarrelProof (talk) 00:18, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Chris Maslanka is a stickler when it comes to English usage. If he uses capitals for "Fuzzy Duck", as he does in the reference cited at that article, then it's good enough for me. JezGrove (talk) 00:29, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * When Wikipedia agrees that it is abandoning its own WP:Manual of Style and WP:Article titles policy in favor of a new Chris Maslanka Rulebook for English, than Chris Maslanka's opinion will be meaningful in a discussion like this. Until then, his view is simply a drop in the source bucket. See also WP:Common-style fallacy and WP:Specialized-style fallacy: WP doesn't write the way particular clusters of off-site writers do, because they are not following our style guide (often they are following another, e.g. for news journalism, or the house style sheet of a specific publisher like Dover Books or whatever). The argument you are presenting, JezGrove, has no connection to how article titles or running-text style are determined on Wikipedia, ever.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:40, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm feeling unpersuaded, but have lost confidence --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:55, 17 December 2020 (UTC) Oppose .  Proper name of a game, and per the best reference.
 * Regarding group nominations like this, if one is opposed, especially the first, then all are oppose as a clumsy substandard nomination. Group nominations should be reserved for when it is both a clear-cut case, and all are exactly the same.  Go away and try "Twenty Questions" on its own merits, don't try to slip different things through together.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * In my view, these are all directly analogous to the Fuzzy duck situation. I had opposed that outcome, but was told it was demanded by MOS:GAMECAPS: I'm surprised to see opposition this time. —&hairsp;BarrelProof (talk) 02:55, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * In my view, the Fuzzy duck precedent is both obscure and dubious. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:47, 15 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Agreed re problematic nature of group noms, & especially hasty discussions followed by mass changes by highly motivated editors. Am not sure what explains the persistent push to lower-case obviously proper noun game names, for example the embarrassingly wrong & hasty decisions to lower-case Fischer Random Chess (not "Fischer random chess"), Grand Chess (not "Grand chess"), Capablanca Chess (not "Capablanca chess"), Alice Chess (not "Alice chess"), and Chinese Checkers (not "Chinese checkers") are just some. (Really, all of the moves at this discussion were wrong, though there is an imbalance in that some have a plethora of supporting RSs, while others are way more obscure and therefore have few. I happen to know from communicating w/ more than a few game inventors their preferences are capped/proper names for their non-commercial game inventions, but I'm sure WP w/ deny credence to said consideration w/o blinking. I was unable to participate in that discussion but also decline fighting for obvious things anymore (the idea of trying to morph from content editor to Wikilawyer on dysfunctional policy to dispute interpretation w/ insistent editors knowing little re games or Pritchard's encyclopedias is not my cup of tea, so I won't). It's for another editor already possessing those policy/research/documentation skills & motivation to use them to make WP less sucky. Thx for consider, --IHTS (talk) 03:56, 15 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Chess960 is always capped but the game is neither trademarked nor copyrighted. Perhaps that explains why the article was moved to an old name, Fischer Random Chess ("Fischer random chess"), to satisfy someone that lower-case c/ be applied in any reference to the name!? The policy is not only inconsistent, it's dysfunctional & crazy-making. --IHTS (talk) 04:03, 15 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Does anyone know who in what WP Proj is expert on proper nouns? What stops moves of Andromeda Galaxy to "Andromeda galaxy", Mississippi River to "Mississippi river", Brooklyn Bridge to "Brooklyn bridge"? The fact game names are less well known doesn't automatically undercut their merit as proper names, especially when inventors give their creations that name form. --IHTS (talk) 04:19, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I consider myself well read on proper nouns and proper names. The best explanation I think is at proper name.  Proper nouns have one massively simplifying rule: nouns are single words.  People talking "proper noun phrase" are making things up.  A "proper name" lacks a hard definition, but the weakest thing here is the singularity of the entity named "Snakes and Ladders", which I argue is met by this game.  Variations on the game result in exactly the same game.  The ultimate arbiter is "usage in quality sources", where "quality" can be argued, but for pragmatic reasons I insist on the current source list of the article as being representative of the best quality sources.  If anyone disagrees, fix the sources to improve their quality.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:39, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ping Any thoughts on this? —&hairsp;BarrelProof (talk) 02:13, 16 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Support (but move The Priest of the Parish to priest of the parish per WP:THE). This kind of mistaken over-capitalization that we have MOS:GAMECAPS. The opposes above claiming this is a proper name are simply flat-out wrong (i.e., confused about that "proper name" even means).  The fact that we have various other articles that need to move is a WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS cleanup matter, not an argument to  move.  See also near-unanimous RfC about this . Furthermore, you can prove in a matter of seconds that the lower-case form dominates in sources, so per the first rule of MOS:CAPS this cannot be capitalized here anyway, even if GAMECAPS did not exist.  In the "snakes and ladders case", I included "game" as a search term, to rule out several published works with titles of or containing "Snakes and Ladders".  The "twenty questions" case predominates in lower-case despite Playboy have an interview column by the title "Twenty Questions", one of its most oft-cited features. Switching to the "20 questions" spelling (with numerals), I again included "game" as a search term, to rule out non-game-related usage, though it's also predominant lower-case if you don't do that . The only Ngram outlier here is "Never Have I Ever", but that may be due to Never Have I Ever (TV series) and other works by (or including) that name. Regardless, it is not consistently capitalized, so it would not be an exception anyway, especially given WP:CONSISTENT policy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:10, 16 December 2020 (UTC) PS: The alak dolak case is just linguistically wrong, too. That's a Persian-language name, and that's a language in a script without capitalization, so we would only capitalize it if it were capitalized in that latinisation with near-consistency in English-language sources, which is provably not even close to the case. E.g., Encyclopædia Iranica gives  name of this game in lower case: "Other synonyms found in the classical dictionaries include lāv, lāva, gūk-čūb, and, in Arabic, qalū and qola" (other than it has the annoying habit of putting the encyclopedia's own article titles in ALL-CAPS, which it does to every topic, not just this game or games in general). The Iranian gives it in lower-case, but prefers the hyphenated form alak-dolak  The Iran Chamber Society gives it as alak-dolak . TheNamesDictionary.com: "Alak dolak is a traditional Iranian game ..." . We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran (Aria Minu-Sepehr, Simon & Schuster, 2012): "alak dolak, a version of jacks" . This is just from page 1 of the search results. If you Google this, even trying to exclude wikis, blogs, and forums , you find that the vast majority of capitalized versions are social-media crap (usernames, Pinterest posts, personal blogs, etc.), promotional, or have nothing to do with this but are instead about songs or other published works with a title consisting of or containing the name of this game. A Google Scholar search, while not rich in results, in 100% lowercase, except for one title-case reference to a title of published work.   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:57, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * SMcCandlish cites a "near-unanimous RfC about this ". It was not unanimous, it was poorly attended, there was under-discussed nuance, the closer over-simplified, and I read no more than "should not be capitalized by default".  There was strong uncontested opinion such as "unless a substantial majority of reliable sources capitalize the term, we should not either".  In some of these cases, that caveat is met.  For The Priest of the Parish, 100% of the references capitalize the name in the lede sentence (the one source).  For Snakes and Ladders, sources capitalize, starting with sources currently listed.  A much better case, and much more better engaged RfC is needed to decide that source use doesn't matter.  "The Priest of the Parish" and "Snakes and Ladders" are proper names of specific things.  People use the names as proper names.  Why do you say they are not proper names?  They are not the slightest bit the same as "poker", "triathlon", or "pool cue".  \\  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You seem unclear on what "near-" means. It was as well-attented as any typical RfC on such matters. You've had almost three years to raise some kind of objection. I've even asked at WT:MOS if there's any interest in re-RfCing this, given that a "usual suspects" trio of you appear intent on defying that RfC's consensus and the guideline (despite having no clear involvement in this topic; I cannot see any evidence that this is other than more "fight against MoS as a tagteam to get more capitalization" behavior that we've already seen too much of. You are also utterly confused that MoS and RM use as criteria the source that have only been cited in the article so far. It has been explained to you many times that this is not and never has been the case. We look at source usage generally, otherwise it would be an obvious and trivial to do WP:GAMING ploy to just go WP:CHERRYPICK a few source that support your preference and to replace ones that do not. None of this is new, and none of it actually pertains to how WP should name these articles, which is clearly per MOS:GAMECAPS. PS: see also WP:FOTROP.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:21, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per MOS:GAMECAPS. I don't see how these are proper names. It is hard to define exactly what a proper name is on edge cases, but these aren't edgy for me. I've decapped several game names over the years and there've been no objections. I think this is mostly specialist style fallacy. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 04:46, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per the consensus that resulted in the GAMECAPS guideline. Primergrey (talk) 06:01, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support – the claim of "proper name" is pretty convincingly contradicted by source usage. I only checked the first one, but MOS:GAMECAPS applies, so unless someone makes a compelling case to go around it or change it, this is a non-starter. Dicklyon (talk) 06:07, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Dicklyon, google ngram is a very poor proxy for "source usage". Most, I guess, would not be suitable for referencing the article.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:02, 16 December 2020 (UTC) So I try this.  Most of the scholarly articles and books are not talking about the game, but about a concept derived from the game.  This might even explain the ngram results.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:07, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It's just stats; you can pull out different indications by focusing on where it says game, for example: see?. Dicklyon (talk) 00:17, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This is not convincing me, however, the serious scholars using nocaps for the iconic concept does.  I still think the game name is a proper name, as an iconic singular game, but if that were true, the name of the concept would be a proper name.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:55, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * See "extended discussion" notes below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:46, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support – the evidence is in the sources. Tony (talk)  11:58, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. Clearly not proper names. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:54, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support I don't see a compelling reason to bypass WP:GAMECAPS/MOS:CAPS, nor I see one offered in this discussion. Yeah, there are sources that capitalize those, but there are also ones that don't, and nothing in those games' history indicate that those are proper or copyrighted names. No such user (talk) 14:23, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support Don't think "Ladders" is a proper noun in snakes and ladders.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 12:54, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Extended discussion
I may be mistaken on this, but I get a strong impression that you and Blueboar (e.g. here) and a handful of other editors (Noetica used to do this, back in the day) are commingling the linguistic, including orthographic-style, meaning of proper name (i.e. a proper-noun phrase, and in English also most adjectival/adverbial derivatives thereof), with the unrelated proper name (philosophy) concept, which has nothing to do with orthography at all, but it simply any string/utterance that uniquely identifies a specific referent. Innumerable things that qualify as proper names in the phil. sense do not in the ling. sense, and this even goes vice versa in some cases ("London" is a proper name in the ling. sense, in a vacuum without any further clarification, despite being the name of more than one place and also a not-infrequent surname; but until it has a clearer, singular, specific contextual referent, it is not yet a proper name in the phil. sense, but is simply a string of letters or phonemes).

I have seen this ling./phil. confusion come up many times in discussions like this, and it is never helpful to continue engaging in the mixture. It's simply an unfortunate coincidence that both terms share the same name (which is ironic, in that the term "proper name" thus fails to specifically identify a particular referent, so proper name is not a proper name in either the ling. or phil. sense, of either the ling. or phil. sense). They are just very different concepts, one of which pertain to writing style and article titles, while the other does not.

Pursuing a philosophy definition of proper name on Wikipedia will produce clear cognitive dissonance. E.g., Blueboar's "Can someone explain WHY we capitalize 'Department of Education' but not 'secretary of education'? (I accept that we do... I just don’t understand WHY)." And your "I'm feeling unpersuaded, but have lost confidence .... This is not convincing me ...." And "It feels wrong that a trademarked name gets capitals, but an iconic ancient game does not" (at the related WT:MOS thread). It will also run directly into WP:P&G problems very quickly. E.g., because the philosophical notion is intimately bound up with of meaning and uniqueness, it inspires editors to try to misuse capitalization (something that pertains, in English, to the linguist sense of proper name) as a signification aid (both for largely unnecessary disambiguation and especially for importance/status signalling), and this is directly against MOS:SIGCAPS as well as raising obvious WP:NPOV problems (the policy basis for the SIGCAPS guideline in the first place)

Another way of looking at this is that the phil. sense of proper name is completely language-independent (i.e., cannot really apply to a question of what to do in one particular register of English-language writing versus what other publishers may choose to do). Meanwhile, the ling. sense varies sharply from language to language. E.g., in English, adjectives like Italian usually qualify as proper names in derivative form, but they do not in Spanish, French, and many other languages, which lower-case them and not otherwise treat them differently from adjectives like short or worldly. Some scripts lack capitalization at all, so even the linguistic concept of proper name has no [or sometimes completely different] orthographic ramifications in languages using such scripts. Nor is there a 1:1 correspondence between proper names (linguistics) and capitalization, even in English. We use capitalization for many purposes (e.g. indicating the start of a sentence; marking acronyms/initialisms as such, unless they become assimilated as regular words like laser); and various proper names do not receive capitals, e.g. k.d. lang, where others receive them where they normally would not, e.g. The Hague is near-universally taken with a capital T, treating the two-word unit as a fused noun phrase, and iPhone, taking one in mid-word. These language-usage vagaries are just not connected in any WP-relevant way to the philosophy use of the phrase proper name. To the extent any linguists and philosophers are trying (largely in vain) to merge the two concepts, various papers and rather expensive books have been published on such ideas (see aforementioned Blueboar thread for links to a bunch of them). They have had no palpable impact on such questions in the world at large, and thus none on how WP approaches proper names – as proper-noun phrases (and their modifier derivatives in most cases).

The difficulty in wrangling with such definitional conflicts is one of the reasons MoS adopted a simple rule (first one mentioned in MOS:CAPS): we do not capitalize something unless the overwhelming majority of independent reliable sources do so for that specific case. It is not possible for this rule (or any style rule, or any rule of any kind) to make every single person happy at every application of it. That is the very nature of rules. We just have to live with it and move on, because the purpose of our rules is not propounding WP:TRUTH, but providing consistent presentation for readers, and a reduction of recurrent WP:BIKESHED strife between editors over style trivia. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:46, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Mathematics section - incorrect description of paper's methodology
The paper cited for the 50.9% figure reads, "Dans notre cas, nous appliquons la règle qui veut qu’il ne soit pas nécessaire d’obtenir exactement le bon nombre pour finir la partie." Translation via Google: "In our case, we apply the rule that it is not necessary to get exactly the right number to end the game." The description in this article — "where the player must roll the exact number to reach square 100" — seems inconsistent with the methodology in the paper. The figure for the first player's expected win percentage that matches the description in this article is around 50.78%, although at present I have only original research to support that.

When time permits I'll review the paper in more detail and edit the article — I imagine it just requires correcting the last sentence of that paragraph. Just wanted to post here in case I'm missing something. — RobinFiveWords (talk) 04:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)