Sorry rules

Quick start

1. Each player puts the 4 pawns of one color in that color’s Start. Shuffle the cards and put them face down in the middle of the board.
2. On your turn, draw the top card and move one of your pawns as it says. Play passes to the left. A 2 also lets you draw again.
3. A pawn leaves Start only on a 1, a 2 or a Sorry card. Most cards move a pawn forward. A 4 moves it backward, and a 10 can move it back 1.
4. End your move on an opponent’s pawn and it goes back to its Start. You may not land on your own pawn. Stop on the start of another color’s slide and ride it.
5. Only your own pawns may enter your Safety Zone, the 5 squares before your Home. A pawn never moves forward past its entrance without going in, and needs the exact count to reach Home.
6. If no pawn can use your card, your turn is over. Otherwise you must use it, even when it hurts, though an 11 never forces a switch. First to get all 4 pawns Home wins.

Rule sheet and score sheet

Print the whole game on one page, and a score sheet made for Sorry. Both are free PDFs for Letter paper.

Download the rule sheet

PDF, 1 page. The whole game on one page.

Download the score sheet

PDF, 1 page. Laid out for Sorry.

Setup

2 to 4 players, each playing alone. A partners game for 4 and a puzzle for 1 player are further down.

You need: A Sorry board, 16 pawns in 4 colors, and a deck of 45 cards.

• There are no 6 or 9 cards.
• The original deck had 44 cards, 4 of each kind. A fifth 1 card was added later to make the game quicker. The rules work the same with either deck.
• The board has 60 squares around its edge, called the track. There are 2 slides on each side, 8 in all. Each color has a Start, a Safety Zone of 5 colored squares, and a Home at the end of it.
• Each player uses the 4 pawns of one color: red, blue, yellow or green. Boxes of the 2013 edition hold 12 pawns, 3 of each color.

1. Put the board in the middle of the table. Shuffle the cards and put the pack face down on its space in the center of the board.
2. Each player draws a card. The highest card makes that player the Leader, and a Sorry card beats every number. Put the cards back and shuffle again.
3. The Leader picks a color and plays first. Each player puts the 4 pawns of their color in the Start of that color.
4. Play passes to the left, which is clockwise. In the next game, the winner of this one goes first.

Red’s Start

Blue’s Start

Yellow’s Start

Green’s Start

The pack

Face down in the center

• Putting the cards drawn for the Leader back in the pack is our suggestion. The rules we checked do not say what to do with them.

How to play

Players take turns, going clockwise. Each turn you draw one card and use it to move one pawn, or two with a 7. The table after the steps says what every card does.

1. Draw a card and move

   On your turn, draw the top card, turn it face up on its marked space on the board and move one pawn as it says. Pawns go clockwise, the way the arrows point. Count every square, and you may pass over any pawn on the way.

   • When more than one of your pawns could make the move, you choose which one.
   • Squares with pawns on them count the same as empty ones.
   • When the pack runs out, shuffle the used cards and put them face down as a new pack.

2. Bring pawns out of Start

   A pawn leaves Start only on a 1, a 2 or a Sorry card. A 1 or 2 puts it on the circle just outside your Start. It does not also move 1 or 2 squares. Each pawn needs its own card to come out.

   • With a 1 or a 2 you may move a pawn already on the board instead.
   • After a 2 brings a pawn out, the extra card you draw may move any of your pawns, the new one too.
   • A Sorry card does not use the circle. The pawn goes straight from Start to the square of an opponent’s pawn. See the card table.
   • No other card brings a pawn out. Early in the game you may draw several cards that you cannot use.
   • If one of your own pawns is still on the circle, you cannot bring out another until it moves, because you may not land on your own pawn.
   • If an opponent’s pawn sits on that circle, the pawn you bring out bumps it back to its Start.

3. Bump other pawns

   Two pawns never share a square. If your move ends on an opponent’s pawn, that pawn goes back to its own Start. You may not end a move on one of your own pawns.

   • Only the square where a move ends matters. Passing over a pawn does nothing to it.
   • Sending a pawn back this way is called bumping. The Sorry card and the 11 can also bump.
   • You can never be made to bump your own pawn. The one way your own pawn goes back to Start is on a slide.

4. Ride the slides

   If your pawn ends its move on the triangle at the start of a slide that is not its own color, it slides to the circle at the far end. Every pawn on that slide, yours too, goes back to its Start.

   • A pawn never slides on a slide of its own color. It stays on the triangle.
   • It makes no difference how the pawn got to the triangle. A pawn moved there by a switch with an 11, or put there with a Sorry card, slides too.
   • A pawn that passes over the triangle, or stops on a square partway along a slide, does not slide.
   • Slides are 4 or 5 squares long.

5. Reach your Safety Zone and Home

   The 5 colored squares before your Home are your Safety Zone. Only your own pawns may go in, moving forward. A pawn may never move forward past the entrance to its own Safety Zone, except to go in. It must reach Home by the exact count. Once it is Home it stays there.

   • An opponent’s 11 may still switch your pawn onto a square past your entrance. That pawn then goes around the board again before it can go in.
   • A card that would carry a pawn past Home cannot be used for that pawn.
   • Other players cannot bump a pawn in your Safety Zone, since their pawns cannot go in. The Sorry card and the 11 cannot touch it either.
   • A 4 or a 10 can move a pawn backward out of the Safety Zone, and sometimes you must. Back on the track, it can be bumped like any other pawn.
   • A pawn cannot go into the Safety Zone backward. It enters only by moving forward.

6. Use the card if you can

   If any of your pawns can use the card, you must use it, even when that hurts you. The one exception is the 11’s switch, which you never have to make. A pawn moves the full count or not at all. If no pawn can use the card, your turn is over.

   • If your only pawn out of Start is in your Safety Zone and you draw a 4, it must go back 4 squares.
   • With a 10, if no pawn can go forward 10, one of them must go back 1, even out of the Safety Zone.
   • With an 11, if no pawn can go forward 11 and you choose not to switch, your turn is over.
   • A 2 gives you another draw even when you cannot use it.
   • Losing a turn this way is called forfeiting.

Example: splitting a 7 between two pawns

You play red. One red pawn is in your Safety Zone, 3 squares from Home. Another is on the track, 4 squares behind a blue pawn, and that square is not the start of a slide. You draw a 7. The first pawn cannot take all 7, because that would carry it past Home. You could move the track pawn all 7, but you choose to split the card. The first pawn moves 3 squares and goes Home by the exact count. The other pawn moves the remaining 4, lands on the blue pawn and bumps it back to Blue’s Start. The two moves add up to 7.

You draw

Red pawn in your Safety Zone, 3 squares from Home

Moves 3 and goes Home

Red pawn on the track, 4 squares behind a blue pawn

Red moves 4 and lands on blue

Blue’s Start

The bumped pawn goes back here

Scoring

The regular game has no points. The first player to get all 4 pawns Home wins. The 1939 rules also give a scoring game, Point Scoring Sorry. How to play it is under Other ways to play, and its points are listed here.

• Point Scoring Sorry: when a player gets all 4 pawns Home, the game ends and everyone scores 1 point for each of their pawns in Home.
• The winner scores 4 for their own pawns, plus 1 point for each opponent pawn in Home.
• The winner also gets one bonus: 24 points if no opponent has a pawn Home, 16 if no opponent has more than 1 Home, or 8 if no opponent has more than 2 Home. Give the largest one that fits.
• In a doubled game the final score is doubled. If every other player drops out when someone doubles, the game ends there and the player who doubled wins 5 points.
• The rule sources we checked give no target score for Point Scoring Sorry. Agree before you start on a number of games or a total to play to.

The first player to move all 4 pawns from Start into Home wins the game. In the partners game, the first team to get all 8 of its pawns Home wins.

Nothing is written down in the regular game. To play a match, mark the winner of each game on the score sheet and count the wins at the end. For Point Scoring Sorry, write down each player’s points after every game.

Scorekeeper

Sorry has no points in the regular game. This counts the games each player wins, so you can play a match. For the partners game, enter each partnership as one player, such as Red and Yellow. A double game counts as 2 wins, so enter it twice. It works in this browser, keeps the game if the page reloads, and needs no account.

Other ways to play

House rules and other versions

Faster game with 3 pawns

Each player uses 3 pawns instead of 4. Everything else stays the same, and the game is much shorter. A win then means getting all 3 pawns Home.

Other decks

The original deck has 44 cards, 4 of each kind. The modern deck has 45, with a fifth 1 card added to make the game quicker. A 1996 Waddingtons edition had 5 of every card. Play the same way with any of them.

The 2013 edition: card changes

Boxes made since 2013 give each player 3 pawns and change some rules. A pawn can leave Start on any number card that moves it forward. The 2 gives no extra draw. A Sorry card can instead move one of your pawns 4 squares forward. The slides are colored differently, so a pawn may ride a slide of its own color.

The 2013 edition: Fire and Ice

The same edition adds Fire and Ice. Depending on the card drawn, they are placed on pawns and change the rules for those pawns. Fire lets a pawn move ahead quickly, before its player’s turn. Ice stops a pawn from being moved or removed from play at all. A 1 may also move the ice and a 2 the fire.

Older boards with a diamond

Some older boards have a colored diamond just behind where each color’s pawns come out of Start. A pawn of that color may not move forward over it and turns toward its own Home instead. Later editions dropped the diamond and its rule. This page follows the 1939 rules, which set a similar limit at the Safety Zone entrance without naming a diamond.

Rule questions

Words used in Sorry

Pawn

One of your playing pieces. Each player has 4 in one color. Older rules call them men.

Start

The space of your color where your pawns wait at the beginning, and where bumped pawns go back to.

Track

The 60 squares around the edge of the board. Pawns in Start, in a Safety Zone or in Home are not on the track.

Slide

A colored strip of 4 or 5 squares on the track. A pawn that stops on the triangle at its start rides to the end, unless the slide is its own color.

Safety Zone

The 5 squares of your color leading to your Home. Only your pawns may enter it, and a pawn never moves forward past its entrance without going in.

Home

The space at the end of your Safety Zone. A pawn needs the exact count to get there, and then it is out of play.

Bump

To send an opponent’s pawn back to its Start by ending your move on its square.

Split

Sharing the 7 squares of a 7 card between two of your pawns.

Switch

Trading the places of one of your pawns and an opponent’s pawn with an 11 card.

Forfeit

To lose your move because no pawn can use the card you drew.

Leader

The player who drew the highest card before the game. The Leader picks a color first and plays first.

What you need

• A Sorry board gameCheck the pawns. Older boxes and classic reissues have 4 of each color. Boxes from the 2013 edition have 3 of each color, which suits the 3-pawn game.Find it on Amazon (A Sorry board game, opens in a new tab)
• Paper and a pencilOnly needed for Point Scoring Sorry, or to count wins over a match. Our printable score sheet and scorekeeper count wins only, so write Point Scoring Sorry points on paper.Find it on Amazon (Paper and a pencil, opens in a new tab)

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