The game title comes from the many ways in which a player can negate the progress of another, while issuing an apologetic "Sorry!"

The board game is laid out in a square with 16 spaces per side, with each player assigned their own coloured Start location and Home locations offset towards the centre, one per side.

contain a coloured "diamond space" directly one space back from each start square; a pawn of the diamond's colour may not move forward over this square.

Instead, a pawn of that colour must diverge from the outer space square towards their "Home".

William Henry Storey of Southend-on-Sea filed for a patent for the game in England, where it was registered as a trade mark on 21 May 1929 (UK number 502898).

Each player chooses four pawns of one color and places them in their Start.

[1] Each player, in turn, draws one card from the deck and follows its instructions.

One must move a pawn if possible; if multiple options are available, they may choose which one to take.

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.

All other things being equal, moves that cause a pawn to end up in front of an opponent's start square are poor choices, due to the high number of cards that allow that opponent to enter.

[6] 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.

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.

Essentially, when a player has the chance to switch with or hit the apparent leader, even though the move will not be to the player's immediate advancement around the board, the move should be made to keep the leader out of "Safety" and more importantly, out of "Home".

At the end of the game, each player scores a point for every man they got home.

[7] The team pairings are always colours on opposite sides of the board (i.e. Red and Yellow vs. Blue and Green).

Two additional items known as Fire and Ice were added, and depending on which card is drawn, can be placed on certain pawns on the board, modifying the playing rules for those pawns.

In short, fire gives a pawn the ability to move ahead quickly before the player's turn, and ice stops a pawn from being moved (or removed from play) at all.

card gives the alternative option of moving forward 4 spaces.

Pawns are represented as bumper cars, and the board follows a path akin to a freeway cloverleaf instead of a regular square.

Upon drawing, the player must ask an opponent the fill-in-the-blank question printed on the card.

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".