06 dez 2025

History of Bingo

The origins of Bingo can be traced back to the year 1530 in which a lottery game called Lo Giuco de Lotto was originated. The game is still held every Saturday in Italy. ‘Le Lotto’ migrated to France in the late 1700s in a form similar to the Bingo we know today, with a playing card, tokens and numbers read aloud.

Throughout the 1800s these lottery type of games spread quickly in Europe. One popular form of the game had a player’s card divided into 3 horizontal rows and 9 vertical ones. The first vertical row contained the numbers from 1 to 10, the second from 11 to 20, and so on. The 3 horizontal rows each contained five squares with numbers in them and 4 blank ones. The object of the game was to be the first to completely cover one of the 3 horizontal rows. The blank squares were considered free squares much like the free square in the Bingo cards of today.
In 1929, a game called ‘Beano’ was played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. Edwin Lowe, a New York toy salesman, observed the game where players exclaimed ‘BEANO!’ if they filled a line of numbers on their card. He introduced it to his friends in New York where one of them mistakenly yelled ‘BINGO!’ in her excitement.
Soon ‘Lowe’s Bingo‘ was very popular and Lowe asked competitors to pay him $1 per year to allow them to call their games Bingo as well. Today Bingo games can be found just about anywhere.

NUMBER NICKNAMES
Here are some nicknames used when calling the numbers in bingo:

At the beginning – number 01
One little duck – number 02
One little flea – number 03
Devil’s number – number 13
Two little ducks – number 22
A duck & a flea – number 23
Two little fleas – number 33
A flea in heaven – number 37
Open two doors – number 44
Any way up – number 69
Two fat ladies – number 88

EXERCISES
1) Where and when did Bingo originate?

2) Who was Edwin Lowe?

3) Was the name ‘Bingo’ created on purpose?

4) Write the numbers below in full:
a) Open two doors, two little fleas. (4433)
  Four thousand, four hundred and thirty-three.
b) Any way up, two ladies. (____)
  _____________________________________________.
c) A flea in heaven, devil’s number. (____)
  _____________________________________________.
d) Two little ducks at the beginning. (____)
  _____________________________________________.

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