Sorry! is a board game that is based on the older game Ludo. Players move their three or four pieces around the board, attempting to get all of their pieces "home" before any other player. Originally manufactured by W.H. Storey & Co in England and later by Hasbro, Sorry! is marketed for two to four players, ages 6 and up. The game title comes from the many ways in which a player can negate the progress of another, while issuing a sarcastic "Sorry!"

Objective

The objective is to be the first player to get all three (four for the modern version) of their colored pawns from their start space, around the board to their "home" space.

In the United States, was filed for Sorry! on 4 Aug 1930 by William Henry Storey. A Canadian patent followed in 1932. The US patent was issued on 11 April 1933. Sorry! was adopted by Parker Brothers in 1934. Hasbro now continuously publishes it.

Classic rules

Each player chooses four pawns of one color and places them in their Start. One player is selected to play first.

The last five squares before each player's Home are "Safety Zones", and are specially colored corresponding to the colors of the Homes they lead to. Access is limited to pawns of the same color. Pawns inside the Safety Zones are immune to being bumped by opponents' pawns or being switched with opponents' pawns via 11 or Sorry! cards. However, if a pawn is forced via a 10 or 4 card to move backward out of the Safety Zone, it is no longer considered "safe" and may be bumped by, or switched with, opponents' pawns as usual until it re-enters the Safety Zone.

A pawn may only move to its Home space by exact count; that is, only cards with the correct number of required spaces can bring the pawn Home. Any pawn that is in its Home space stays there for the rest of the game. The first player to get all of their pawns in their Home space wins.

Classic cards and function

The modern deck contains 45 cards: there are five 1 cards as well as four each of the other cards (Sorry!, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12). The 6s or 9s are omitted to avoid confusion with each other. The first edition of the game had 44 cards (four of each) and the extra 1 card was soon introduced as an option for quicker play. A 1996 board from Waddingtons had five of each card.

Cards are annotated with the following actions:

{|class="wikitable"

!1

|Either move a pawn from Start or move a pawn one space forward. (In the 2013 edition, the player may also "move ice" before doing so.)

|-

!2

|Either move a pawn from Start or move a pawn two spaces forward. Drawing a two, even if it does not enable movement, entitles the player to draw again at the end of their turn. (In the 2013 edition, the "draw again" rule is removed, but the player may also "move fire" as part of this card's effect.)

|-

!3

|Move a pawn three spaces forward.

|-

!4

|Move a pawn four spaces backward.

|-

!5

|Move a pawn five spaces forward.

|-

!7

|Move one pawn seven spaces forward, or split the seven spaces between two pawns (such as four spaces for one pawn and three for another). This makes it possible for two pawns to enter Home on the same turn, for example. The seven cannot be used to move a pawn out of Start, even if the player splits it into a six and one or a five and two. The entire seven spaces must be used or their turn ends. The player cannot move their pawn backwards with a split.

|-

!8

|Move a pawn eight spaces forward.

|-

!10

|Move a pawn ten spaces forward or one space backward. If none of a player's pawns can move forward 10 spaces, then one pawn must move back one space.

|-

!11

|Move eleven spaces forward, or switch the places of one of the player's own pawns and an opponent's pawn. A player who cannot move 11 spaces is not forced to switch and instead can end their turn. An 11 cannot be used to switch a pawn that is in a Safety Zone, or to move a pawn out of Start.

|-

!12

|Move a pawn twelve spaces forward.

|-

!style="white-space:nowrap;"|Sorry!

|Take any one pawn from Start and move it directly to a square occupied by any opponent's pawn, sending that pawn back to its own Start. A Sorry! card cannot be used on an opponent's pawn in a Safety Zone or at the Home base. If there are no pawns on the player's Start, or no opponent's pawns on any space that can be moved to, the turn ends. (In the 2013 version, the player can also move any of their pawns forward four spaces. If the player cannot move forward 4 after there are no pawns in start or no opponent pawn on any space, their turn is forfeited.)

Due to the 11 (switching places), 4 (moving backwards, as noted above), and Sorry! (allowing the player to send virtually any pawn back to its start) cards, the lead in the game can change dramatically in a short amount of time; players are very rarely so far behind as to be completely out of the game. This should be considered when playing a Sorry! or an 11.

Leaving one of your pawns near your start space will allow you to move backwards and make it into your safety zone or close enough without having to go all around the board. The team pairings are always colours on opposite sides of the board (i.e. Red and Yellow vs. Blue and Green). The game is then played as if two players had eight pawns each: for example, the yellow player may move a red pawn for any legal move. A 7 card could be split between a yellow pawn and a red one but can still be split between no more than two pieces. However, a partner's pawns are not immune to bumps: if yellow were to draw a Sorry! card with only red pawns on the board, or land on a red pawn's occupied space, yellow would have to bump its teammate.

Once one of the partners has played all of their pieces into home, they continue to draw and play cards on their turn, if possible, for their partner. The first partnership to play all eight pieces in its home wins.

Furthermore, each player only has three pawns. A pawn can be moved out from Start upon any positive number card. A Sorry! card gives the alternative option of moving forward 4 spaces. The 2 card no longer allows one to pull another card. The game consists of three dice, four home bases, a start base, and sixteen pawns, four in each color. Up to four players can play this game. To play, each player takes a home base and sets it on a different color and all of the pawns are put on the start base no matter how many people are playing. The first person rolls all three dice and gets one of four possibilities for each die:

  1. Color pawn – The player takes the corresponding color pawn from the start base and, if it matches up with the color of their home base, puts it in their home section. If not, it is put in their waiting area. When there are no more pawns of a particular color in the Start base and a player rolls that same color, he can take that color pawn from another player's waiting area, not their Home section.
  2. Sorry! – Take a pawn from the home section of one player's home base and keep it.
  3. Wild Pawn – The player may take any color pawn from the Start base or waiting areas (not the Home section of another player) and keep it.
  4. Slide – Change either one's own Home section or someone else's Home section to a different color.

The first person to get four pawns of the same color in their home section wins.

In 2021, Hasbro re-released the game under the name Sorry! Diced!.

Sorry! Not Sorry!

Sorry! Not Sorry! is an adult-themed edition of Sorry! which consisted of the classic game, but added several cards each containing a "Have you ever...?" question. Upon drawing, the player must ask an opponent the fill-in-the-blank question printed on the card. If the opponent answered yes, both the player and opponent move six spaces; if the answer is no, then they can only move three spaces.

This game was part of Hasbro's collection of parody versions of their classic games, which included The Game of Life, Operation, and Clue, which were respectively retitled The Game of Life: Quarter Life Crisis, Botched Operation, and Clue: What Happened Last Night? Lost in Vegas.

Reception

Games magazine included Sorry! in their "Top 100 Games of 1980", praising it as an "old classic in the pachisi mold" that was "Especially recommended for family play" even though "The title gives us cause for regret".

Games magazine included Sorry! in their "Top 100 Games of 1981", praising it as an "exciting race game, ideal for family play" that is "not as mindless as it may appear".

Games magazine included Sorry! in their "Top 100 Games of 1982", noting that many of the movement cards "give interesting options" and that "The game is never dull, and is never decided until the last play."

Reviews

  • Family Games: The 100 Best

See also

  • List of cross and circle games
  • Mensch ärgere Dich nicht
  • Ludo

References

  • Hasbro documents
  • 1972 rules
  • 1992 rules
  • 2003 rules
  • Rules in Spanish