Pachisi

Pachisi is a cross-and-circle race game played on a cloth board. Race all four of your pieces from the outer yard, around the board, and into the central Charkoni (home) square before your opponents.

1. Roll: Click "Roll Shells" to throw 6 cowrie shells. The number landing mouth-up is your move value (0 up = move 25).
2. Enter the board: A piece leaves the yard only on a roll of 6 or 25.
3. Move a piece: After rolling, click a highlighted piece to move it forward by the roll value.
4. Capture: Landing on an enemy piece on a non-castle square sends it back to their yard.
5. Castle squares (the indigo patches stitched with an ivory X) are safe - no captures, any piece may coexist.
6. Blockade: Two or more same-colour pieces on a square form a blockade - enemies cannot land or pass through.
7. Bonus roll: Rolling 6 or 25 grants an extra roll. Make use of it!
8. Home: A piece must enter the Charkoni exactly - it becomes home and cannot be captured.
9. Win (2P): First player to bring all 4 pieces home wins. Win (4P): First team with BOTH players' all-4 home wins.

Pachisi takes its name from paccīs, "twenty-five" - the best throw of the cowrie shells. One of the Indian subcontinent's most celebrated games, it was traditionally played not on a wooden board but on an embroidered cloth: a cruciform of chequered patches stitched onto a madder-red ground, which could be rolled up and carried anywhere. Its sibling game chaupar even takes its name from the cloth - "four cloths," one for each arm of the cross.

The chronicler Abu'l-Fazl recorded that the Mughal Emperor Akbar had a life-size board inlaid into the courtyard at Fatehpur Sikri, where sixteen costumed women of the harem moved across the squares as living pieces. On the household cloth, each player races four beehive-shaped turned-wood pawns around the board counterclockwise, throwing six cowrie shells for dice, capturing opponents and aiming to bring every pawn home to the central Charkoni.

In 1896 the game was simplified and patented in Britain as Ludo, and related derivatives followed, such as Parcheesi (USA) and Sorry!. The original four-player team game - cowrie dice, blockades, castle squares and all - preserves a strategic depth the modern repackagings left behind.