Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

5-31-2022

Abstract

In the classic game Sorry!®, players try to move tokens around the board from Start to Home in as few turns as possible. Moves are determined by cards, some of which provide alternative options—in particular one card specifies “forward 10 spaces or backwards one space.” Because backward moves can lead to a shortcut Home, we ask when using that option is optimal. To make this analysis we model the movement of a single token around the board as a Markov process, from which we can determine the expected number of turns for different strategies. We also look at the effect on the length of the game for other card actions and speculate how this might play out with multiple tokens and players.

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