snakes and ladders
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English
Alternative forms
Noun
snakes and ladders (uncountable)
- A children's luck-based board game of Indian origin, played on a numbered grid, the aim of which is to proceed to the end, and in which ladders aid progress and snakes impede it.
- (figuratively) any situation in which people or events go forward and backward, seemingly at random
- 1970, New Scientist, volume 45, numbers 682-694, page 493:
- Teachers, senior teachers, and principal teachers would have built-in status and the scales would offer well-defined career prospects instead of the ambiguous and often misleading snakes-and-ladders situation which at present exists.
- 1983, Opera, volume 34, numbers 7-12, page 1295:
- His Mireille has had a snakes-and-ladders career, starting up, going down, then finally rising once more.
- 2009, Kathryn Bonella, Hotel Kerobokan: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali's Most Notorious Jail:
- But his snakes and ladders career would soon take its biggest hit.
- 2022 March 9, Stefanie Foster, “RAIL Supplement”, in RAIL, number 952, page 3:
- As the country continues to wrestle with one of the greatest upheavals to everyday life in recent memory, passenger numbers have had a turbulent 'snakes and ladders' journey - and continue to lag behind pre-pandemic levels.