About.

Gutikhela (গুটিখেলা) is Bengali for "the piece game". It is the home of two apps, Kori (কড়ি) and Chaal (চাল), made by Satyapir, Bengali first and in English too.

Kori plays Ludo, Snakes and Ladders (with the old 72-square board), Pachisi, Chaupar and Ganj. Chaal plays chess and Sheep vs Tigers, Bengal's bagh-bandi, with a chess puzzle every day. In both, the adviser Birbal sits beside you.

Where the facts come from

The history on these pages is written in our own words from published sources, cited on each page. The main one is The Art of Play: Board and Card Games of India, ed. Andrew Topsfield (Marg, 2006): I.L. Finkel on pachisi and on the hunt games, Andrew Topsfield on snakes and ladders, Simon Digby on Ganj. The rules the apps play are written up from the same chapters, and where the book is silent the page says so.

Where the pictures come from

Every painting on the site is public domain or CC0, taken from a museum's open-access collection with its licence read from the museum's own records. Each one is credited where it appears, and all of them are listed on Image credits. The screenshots are from our own builds of Kori and Chaal; the paintings inside them are credited in each app.