

The deck has one pink card for each named location, and drawing such a card moves a player directly to that board location (This move can be either forward or backward). Some cards have two marks of a colour, in which case the player moves his or her marker ahead to the second-next space of that colour. Players alternate in drawing movement cards, most of which show one of six colours, and then moving their token ahead to the next space of that colour. In addition there are six pink spaces containing named characters, two bridges, and three of the coloured spaces are sticky (more of this later). The board consists of a linear track containing 134 spaces, mostly coloured red, green, blue, yellow, orange or purple. A deck of movement cards it shuffled, and players take turns to move their tokens according to the instructions on the card. There is no skill required to play Candyland (other than being able to recognise colours).

This analysis is based on the rules in the version of the game that our family owns!īefore reading this article, if you have not done so already, you might want to read the previous two articles regarding the analysis of Chutes and Ladders and Risk. Over the years, subtle rule changes have been made. The original game was designed by Eleanor Abbot in 1945. This blog concerns the mathematical analysis of Candyland®, a children’s game produced by Hasbro (before that Milton Bradley).
