50 Fun Facts About Bingo

What do you shout when you complete a winning line?

In British 90-ball bingo you might shout 'line' or 'house' instead.

What are the five column letters on a standard American bingo card?

They run from left to right across the top of the card.

A standard American bingo game uses numbers from 1 to what?

British bingo, by contrast, uses 1 to 90.

The middle square on a 75-ball bingo card is marked as what?

It is considered automatically filled.

How many squares are on a standard American bingo card?

They form five columns by five rows, including the free space.

Which numbers appear in the 'B' column of a 75-ball card?

Each column has its own range of fifteen numbers.

Which numbers appear under the 'O' column of a 75-ball card?

It is the highest of the five ranges.

Modern bingo was popularised in 1929 after Edwin Lowe saw a carnival game called what?

Players marked the cardboard with dried beans and a rubber stamp.

According to legend, the name 'Bingo' came from a player accidentally shouting it instead of what?

The other story is that the word echoes the sound of a bell.

Bingo's popularity soared in the Great Depression when which institutions adopted it as a fundraiser?

Lowe sold a 12-card set for a dollar and a 24-card set for two.

Bingo descends from a game of chance played in Italy by about 1530, called what?

A home version called Tombola later appeared in Naples.

The 1778 French game Le Lotto had three rows and how many columns?

Five squares in each row carried numbers from 1 to 90.

In 18th-century Germany, a bingo-like game was used to teach children spelling and what else?

It also taught them animal names.

The special ink markers players use to cover called numbers are called what?

They let players mark many cards quickly.

A 2x2 block of marked squares in a corner is a bingo pattern called what?

Special games sometimes only count these shaped patterns.

A 'blackout' or 'coverall' win requires covering how many numbers plus the centre square?

That is the entire card.

British bingo is played with how many balls, unlike the American 75?

The two games have completely different ticket layouts.

A British 90-ball bingo ticket has how many numbered spaces?

They are arranged in nine columns by three rows.

How many numbers does a single row on a UK bingo ticket contain?

With three rows, a full ticket has fifteen numbers in all.

Covering all fifteen numbers on a UK ticket is called a what?

Covering a single row is simply a 'line'.

UK bingo tickets are sold in strips of how many, so every number 1 to 90 appears once?

This guarantees the whole range is covered across the strip.

What phrase does a UK bingo host traditionally say to signal the game is starting?

It tells players to look at their cards.

The person who draws the balls and reads out the numbers is called the what?

In commercial halls the number is also shown on a monitor.

On a 75-ball card, a winning line can run horizontally, vertically or which other way?

The way numbers are assigned makes a horizontal win about three times likelier than a vertical one.

Which numbers fill the 'N' column of a 75-ball card?

The N column shares the free space in its middle.

Which numbers fill the 'I' column of a 75-ball card?

It sits second from the left.

Which numbers fill the 'G' column of a 75-ball card?

It is the fourth column.

Bingo balls are commonly drawn using a cage or which air-powered device?

Many halls now use electronic random number generators instead.

Beyond Nevada casinos, commercial games of this kind in the US are mainly run by whom?

Charities and churches run the non-commercial games.

Bingo is often used in schools as an instructional tool, with numbers replaced by what?

Custom programs let teachers make their own cards.

The most chips you can place on a 75-ball card without actually having a bingo is how many?

That does not count the automatically filled free space.

In the early 1920s, who standardised and copyrighted the carnival game around Pittsburgh?

He published a rule book in 1933.

Covering only the four corner squares counts as a valid win in which kind of special format?

Special games accept shapes other than a straight line.

Because players juggle many tickets at once, what do halls usually have players do?

Daubers help them mark quickly.

In commercial halls, a bingo cannot be claimed until the number has been done what?

The caller shows the next number on a monitor after announcing it.

The Neapolitan home version of Italian lotto, with cards and called numbers, is called what?

It appeared in the 18th century.

Some novelty bingo games actually award the prize for doing what?

These are the opposite of a normal game.

In 'u-pick 'em' bingo, how many of the possible numbers do a player's three cards contain?

Players then choose which numbers to play.

A player who needs just one more number to win is often described as what?

Terms include ready, set, down or 'has a shot'.

The double-deck 'double-action' cards carry how many numbers in each square?

It doubles the ways to mark each square.

Bob Monkhouse's bingo-based BBC game show used cards numbered from 1 to what?

Instead of the usual 3x9 ticket, the show's cards and its Gold Card bonus board used a 3x6 grid.

Which holiday camp chain introduced modern bingo calls devised by a professor in 2003?

Traditional rhyming calls have faded anyway since electronic random number generators arrived in British halls.

The company of bingo populariser Edwin Lowe also produced which dice game?

Lowe bought the rights in 1956 from a Canadian couple who played it aboard their yacht, which inspired the name.

In which city did Edwin Lowe first see the carnival game he would rename, in December 1929?

Back home in Brooklyn he ran the game for friends, and his first printed sets contained just 24 cards.

Which toy company bought the E. S. Lowe Company in 1973 for $26 million?

By then Lowe's firm offered more than 6,000 card combinations and had also made miniature chess sets for WWII troops.

Which dancehall boss launched a bingo chain in 60 of his venues, including the Lyceum Ballroom?

The Betting and Gaming Act 1960 legalised large cash prizes from 1 January 1961 and set off the British bingo boom.

By what traditional name was bingo long known in Britain?

Early British slang also recorded 'bingo' as a customs officer's triumphant cry after a successful search.

What is the minimum age to enter a bingo hall in the UK?

It counts as gambling, in an industry thought to be worth around £1.3 billion.

Which British bingo chain is part of The Rank Group?

Rank's cinema arm was already hosting bingo at the Blackpool Odeon in the early 1960s.

In Quebec, the game goes by what name?

In India the same game is known as Tambola.