snakes and ladders

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A children's luck-based board game 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.
• noun idiomatic, figuratively any situation in which people or events go forward and backward, seemingly at random

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a board game for children who use dice to move counters up ladders and down snakes