A short history of bingo
How lotto-style games grew from a 1500s Italian lottery into tombola, housie, tambola and the 75-ball card, and how word bingo followed.
Bingo is one of the most widely played paper games, yet its family tree is easy to lose. Its roots run from an Italian lottery to Neapolitan family tables, British community halls and North American card tables. Each branch kept the same core idea: players mark numbers on a card, and a caller draws them one at a time until someone completes a pattern.
An Italian lottery
Lotto-style games are often traced to an Italian lottery of the 1500s, known as Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia. Historians are cautious about the exact details of its early years, so it is best to treat the start date as approximate. That lottery is often cited as the starting point for the family of games that followed.
Tombola in Naples
Tombola is an Italian family number game using the numbers 1 to 90. It is traditionally played at Christmas, especially around Naples, where numbers have traditional nicknames known as La Smorfia. Part of the fun is knowing the nicknames. Tombala on Paperoom prints 90-ball tickets in the same spirit, for families who want the traditional format at home.
Housie, housey-housey and tambola
In Britain, 90-ball bingo was long called housie or housey-housey. In India, the 90-number game is called tambola or housie, and it is common at parties and festivals. The names overlap, but the basic format is much the same: a ticket of numbers, a caller and a race to complete a row or the whole card.
Prizes in these games often go to the first player to complete a row, a second row, or the full ticket. Many families agree on the prizes before the first call, so nobody argues about them later.
At a party, a good caller reads each number clearly and pauses long enough for people to find it. Part of what people remember about these games is the rhythm of the call itself, with any nicknames and jokes the caller adds.
The 90-ball ticket
A 90-ball ticket has three rows and nine columns, with fifteen numbers in total. Each column covers a range of ten numbers, starting with 1 to 9 in the first column, 10 to 19 in the second, and so on up to 80 to 90 in the last. Players mark each number as it is called, and only the numbers on their own ticket count.
Each row holds five numbers, and each column holds at least one, so every call falls into a known place on the ticket.
The 75-ball card
The North American format uses a card with five columns labelled B, I, N, G and O, and numbers drawn from 1 to 75. Each letter has its own range: B covers 1 to 15, I covers 16 to 30, N covers 31 to 45, G covers 46 to 60 and O covers 61 to 75. The letter tells players which column a number belongs to, so a caller might say "B seven" or "N forty-two". The centre square of the N column is usually free.
This format was popularised in the United States from around 1930, and it is the form many people picture when they hear the word bingo.
From numbers to words
Once the card format was established, with a grid, a caller, markers and a first-to-finish rule, it could carry other things. Word bingo, where each square holds a word or a picture name instead of a number, grew from the same idea. Families and classrooms often use it for spelling, vocabulary and the names of everyday things, because the caller can read any list aloud. A single set of words can be reused for a new round simply by changing the list, so the same paper game can cover animals one week and kitchen words the next.
If you want to make your own, word bingo on Paperoom can produce custom cards, and it also prints 75-ball number cards with a caller sheet. Print one test sheet first, at 100% scale, so the squares come out the size you expect.