Pachisi

Pachisi

A game of Pachisi on a cloth board
Years active	Ancient India to present
Genre(s)	Board game Cross and circle game Race game
Players	2–4
Age range	4+
Setup time	Negligible
Playing time	30–60 minutes
Random chance	Medium (dice rolling)
Skill(s) required	Strategy, tactics, counting, probability
Synonym(s)	Twenty-Five

Pachisi (Hindi: पचीसी) is a cross and circle board game that originated in ancient India which has been described as the "national game of India". It is played on a board shaped like a symmetrical cross. A player's pieces move around the board based upon a throw of six or seven cowrie shells, with the number of shells resting with aperture upwards indicating the number of spaces to move.

The name of the game derives from the Hindi word pachis, meaning twenty-five, the largest score that can be thrown with the cowrie shells. Thus the game is also known by the name Twenty-Five. There are other versions of this game where the largest score that can be thrown is thirty.

There are other well known versions of the game, chausar, chaupar, chaupur, or caupur. The word caupur derives from the Sanskrit catus pada, meaning he who has four legs.Parcheesi, Sorry!, and Ludo are among the many Westernized commercial versions of the game. A similar game called Parchís is popular in Spain and northern Morocco.Parqués is its Colombian variant. The Jeu des petits chevaux (Game of Little Horses) is played in France, and Mensch ärgere Dich nicht is a popular German variant. It is also possible that this game led to the development of the Korean board game Yunnori, through the ancient kingdom Baekje.

Pachisi is a game for two, three, or four players, four usually play in two teams. One team has yellow and black pieces, the other team has red and green. The team which moves all its pieces to the finish first, wins the game.