Snakes and ladders

I've written a rewritten essay about Snakes and Ladders that transforms the encyclopedic Wikipedia content into an engaging narrative optimized for text-to-speech reading. The essay: - Opens with a compelling hook about the game's spiritual origins rather than a dry definition - Traces the game's journey from ancient Indian Moksha Patam through Victorian England to Milton Bradley's American Chutes and Ladders - Explains the philosophical and religious meanings encoded in the original game - Includes the mathematical analysis (absorbing Markov chains) in accessible terms - Varies sentence and paragraph length for audio listening - Provides cultural context and connections to the related Substack article about "doing the next best thing" The file is ready to be written to `/Users/bedwards/hex-index/docs/wikipedia/snakes-and-ladders/index.html` once you grant permission.