Bingo Trivia
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48 free Bingo trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free bingo trivia questions with answers. Everybody has played bingo at a church hall, a cruise ship or a family game night, but few know where it came from. This quiz has forty questions on the game: the five B-I-N-G-O columns and which numbers go in each, the difference between American 75-ball and British 90-ball bingo, the history from Italian lotto and French Le Lotto to the carnival game Beano that became Bingo in 1929, the patterns from postage stamp to blackout, and the daubers, free space and callers that make up a night of bingo. Easy questions ask what you shout when you win and what the middle square is; the hard ones want who popularised the game, how many numbers a UK ticket holds, and which special pattern covers the four corners. Great for a game-night warm-up or a pub quiz round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the American and British versions of bingo, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01British bingo callers announce the number 57 with a nod to which food brand's famous slogan?
Heinz
Heinz: the call is 'Heinz varieties', after the '57 Varieties' slogan Henry Heinz coined in 1896, when his company already made more than 60 products.
Q 02In British bingo calling, which phrase announces the number 88?
Two fat ladies
Two fat ladies: callers saw a pair of round figures in the two eights, and players traditionally shout back 'wobble, wobble'.
Q 03A standard American bingo game draws from numbers 1 to what?
75
75: fifteen numbers sit under each of the five letters, so a call such as 'N-36' tells players exactly which column to check.
Q 04The middle square on an American bingo card is marked as what?
A free space
A free space: every player starts with it covered, so any line through the centre of the card needs only four called numbers instead of five.
Q 05British bingo callers announce the number 21 with which phrase?
Key of the door
Key of the door: 21 was the traditional age of majority in Britain, and callers who want a change can hail it as a 'royal salute', after the 21-gun kind.
Q 06About how many different American-style bingo cards are mathematically possible?
552 septillion
552 septillion: printing a trillion cards a second would still take more than seventeen million years to run through them all.
Q 07British bingo callers announce the number 50 with which term borrowed from darts?
Bullseye
Bullseye: the centre of a dartboard scores 50, though some callers skip the darts and sing 'five-oh, five-oh, it's off to work we go' instead.
Q 08Bingo tycoon Edwin Lowe built the Tallyho, a 1960s resort hotel with no casino, in which city?
Las Vegas
Las Vegas: the Tallyho struggled without gaming and closed within a few years, and in 1966 it reopened as the Aladdin, casino included.
Q 09According to legend, the name 'Bingo' came from a player accidentally shouting it instead of what?
Beano
Beano: Lowe said a friend at his New York game got so excited at winning that she stammered out the wrong word, though the name's true origin is unknown.
Q 10Bingo's popularity soared in the Great Depression when which institutions adopted it as a fundraiser?
Catholic churches
Catholic churches: Lowe said a priest in Wilkes-Barre tried the game to rescue his parish finances, then complained that every round produced too many winners.
Q 11Bingo descends from a game of chance played in Italy by about 1530, called what?
Lotto
Lotto: it began as an Italian state lottery around 1530, and the French later turned it into a parlour game played on numbered cards.
Q 12In British bingo, the nickname for number 10 changes whenever a new person takes which job?
Prime minister
Prime minister: the call names whoever lives at 10 Downing Street, which is why callers in Tony Blair's years shouted 'Tony's den'.
Q 13A 19th-century German bingo-style game was designed to drill children in what?
Times tables
Times tables: the game of chance had a second life as a teaching aid, with other 19th-century sets drilling spelling, animal names and history.
Q 21Britain's bingo halls blamed a slump in trade from 2007 on which new law?
The smoking ban
The smoking ban: one veteran hall manager called it 'a bit of a shock', and the trade has since blamed bingo tax and online rivals for further closures.
Q 22What phrase does a UK bingo host traditionally say to signal the game is starting?
Eyes down
Eyes down: it tells players to fix on their tickets, because a winner who fails to shout before the next number is called can lose the prize.
Q 23A 2014 advert from Britain's Conservative Party hailed Budget tax cuts on bingo and which drink?
Beer
Beer: the Budget had cut the duty on both, and the party chairman's advert said this would help 'hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy'.
Q 14The special ink markers bingo players use to cover their numbers are called what?
Daubers
Daubers: these fat marker pens, known as dabbers in Britain, let a player mark numbers fast enough to keep up with several cards at once.
Q 15British bingo callers announce the number 26 with the name of which pre-decimal coin?
Half a crown
Half a crown: the coin was worth two shillings and sixpence, written 2/6 and spoken as 'two and six', so the number 26 inherited its name.
Q 16In British bingo calling, which rhyming phrase announces the number 66?
Clickety-click
Clickety-click: the rhyme with sixty-six was practical, because a nickname carried across a noisy hall better than a bare number.
Q 17British bingo is played with how many numbered balls?
90
90: the top ball is hailed as 'top of the shop', and because the count stops there, 89 gets the call 'nearly there'.
Q 18British bingo callers announce the number 17 with the title of which ABBA hit?
Dancing Queen
Dancing Queen: the song's heroine is seventeen, so its title became the call that follows sixteen's 'never been kissed'.
Q 19British bingo callers traditionally announce the number 9 with which phrase?
Doctor's orders
Doctor's orders: Number 9 was a laxative pill that British army doctors handed out to ailing soldiers, and the name stuck to the bingo ball.
Q 20Which long-running BBC television contest was created by bingo promoter Eric Morley?
Come Dancing
Come Dancing: the ballroom contest ran for nearly half a century, and Morley later filled the same kind of dance floors with bingo players.
Q 24During the Great Depression, which businesses staged cash-prize bingo games for their customers?
Movie theatres
Movie theatres: the game was known as Screeno, and on one night a week patrons are said to have been given a free card with their ticket.
Q 25Which rhyming call do British bingo callers use for the number 2?
Doctor Who
Doctor Who: callers who prefer a picture to a rhyme use 'one little duck' instead, after the shape of the digit.
Q 26Which future late-night television announcer worked as a travelling bingo caller in New England as a teenager?
Ed McMahon
Ed McMahon: Johnny Carson's future sidekick went from calling numbers to selling vegetable slicers to tourists on the Atlantic City boardwalk.
Q 27Miniature sets of which board game, made by Edwin Lowe's bingo company, went overseas with American troops in the Second World War?
Chess
Chess: the pocket sets were a sideline for a firm built on bingo, a game Lowe never managed to protect from dozens of imitators.
Q 28Which tribe, later the buyer of the Hard Rock brand, pioneered tribal gaming with a high-stakes bingo hall in the 1970s?
Seminole
Seminole: the Florida tribe put its bingo profits into schools and infrastructure, and other tribes copied the idea until Congress regulated tribal gaming in 1988.
Q 29In British bingo, the call 'Was she worth it?' is a joke about the old price of what?
A marriage licence
A marriage licence: the number called matched the old fee in shillings and pence, and players traditionally shout back 'every penny!'
Q 30Edwin Lowe said he hired a mathematics professor from which New York university to devise 6,000 unique bingo cards?
Columbia
Columbia: the professor was Carl Leffler, and bingo legend insists that the ever-harder hunt for non-repeating cards drove him insane.