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50 free Bingo trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do you shout when you complete a winning line?
Bingo
In British 90-ball bingo you might shout 'line' or 'house' instead.
Q 02What are the five column letters on a standard American bingo card?
B-I-N-G-O
They run from left to right across the top of the card.
Q 03A standard American bingo game uses numbers from 1 to what?
75
British bingo, by contrast, uses 1 to 90.
Q 04The middle square on a 75-ball bingo card is marked as what?
A free space
It is considered automatically filled.
Q 05How many squares are on a standard American bingo card?
25
They form five columns by five rows, including the free space.
Q 06Which numbers appear in the 'B' column of a 75-ball card?
1 to 15
Each column has its own range of fifteen numbers.
Q 07Which numbers appear under the 'O' column of a 75-ball card?
61 to 75
It is the highest of the five ranges.
Q 08Modern bingo was popularised in 1929 after Edwin Lowe saw a carnival game called what?
Beano
Players marked the cardboard with dried beans and a rubber stamp.
Q 09According to legend, the name 'Bingo' came from a player accidentally shouting it instead of what?
Beano
The other story is that the word echoes the sound of a bell.
Q 10Bingo's popularity soared in the Great Depression when which institutions adopted it as a fundraiser?
Catholic churches
Lowe sold a 12-card set for a dollar and a 24-card set for two.
Q 11Bingo descends from a game of chance played in Italy by about 1530, called what?
Lotto
A home version called Tombola later appeared in Naples.
Q 12The 1778 French game Le Lotto had three rows and how many columns?
Nine
Five squares in each row carried numbers from 1 to 90.
Q 13In 18th-century Germany, a bingo-like game was used to teach children spelling and what else?
The multiplication table
It also taught them animal names.
Q 14The special ink markers players use to cover called numbers are called what?
Q 21UK bingo tickets are sold in strips of how many, so every number 1 to 90 appears once?
6
This guarantees the whole range is covered across the strip.
Q 22What phrase does a UK bingo host traditionally say to signal the game is starting?
Eyes down
It tells players to look at their cards.
Q 23The person who draws the balls and reads out the numbers is called the what?
Caller
In commercial halls the number is also shown on a monitor.
Q 24On a 75-ball card, a winning line can run horizontally, vertically or which other way?
Daubers
They let players mark many cards quickly.
Q 15A 2x2 block of marked squares in a corner is a bingo pattern called what?
A postage stamp
Special games sometimes only count these shaped patterns.
Q 16A 'blackout' or 'coverall' win requires covering how many numbers plus the centre square?
24
That is the entire card.
Q 17British bingo is played with how many balls, unlike the American 75?
90
The two games have completely different ticket layouts.
Q 18A British 90-ball bingo ticket has how many numbered spaces?
27
They are arranged in nine columns by three rows.
Q 19How many numbers does a single row on a UK bingo ticket contain?
5
With three rows, a full ticket has fifteen numbers in all.
Q 20Covering all fifteen numbers on a UK ticket is called a what?
Full House
Covering a single row is simply a 'line'.
Diagonally
The way numbers are assigned makes a horizontal win about three times likelier than a vertical one.
Q 25Which numbers fill the 'N' column of a 75-ball card?
31 to 45
The N column shares the free space in its middle.
Q 26Which numbers fill the 'I' column of a 75-ball card?
16 to 30
It sits second from the left.
Q 27Which numbers fill the 'G' column of a 75-ball card?
46 to 60
It is the fourth column.
Q 28Bingo balls are commonly drawn using a cage or which air-powered device?
A ball blower
Many halls now use electronic random number generators instead.
Q 29Beyond Nevada casinos, commercial games of this kind in the US are mainly run by whom?
Native American halls
Charities and churches run the non-commercial games.
Q 30Bingo is often used in schools as an instructional tool, with numbers replaced by what?
Reader words or pictures
Custom programs let teachers make their own cards.