Posted on February 19, 2009 - by admin

Bingo Lingo for You

An interesting bunching together of the obvious and the metaphorical, bingo terminology probably developed as the situation decreed.
For instance, you are ‘waiting’ if you are waiting for only one more number that completes your bingo pattern. Equally representative is ‘false alarm’ when someone calls ‘Bingo’, thinking they have completed the pattern. It is also grandiosely called ‘social error’, more colloquially ‘bongo’. In contrast to this obvious explanation is the alternative term for ‘waiting’ – ‘cased’. For reasons best known to the originator of the term, you are ‘cased’ for the same reason that you are ‘waiting’.

‘Breaking the Bubble’, meanwhile, is synonymous with a breakthrough. The simplest bingo pattern requires 5 numbers in a single row or column, so you have broken the bubble only when that happens. A very lucky bingo-er might get it in the first five numbers called. Then there are the enthusiasts who call out Bingo when they see the next number on the screen; remember it has to be ‘called out’ before you can yell “Bingo”. These guys are ‘jumping the gun’.

Bingo also has a ‘standard’; translate that to mean that all numbers with the same second digit as the first called number are considered called, including the single digit number in the matrix. ‘Wild numbers’ add a dash of the unknown and the picking of wild numbers is called ‘forwards /backwards’. If the first number picked is 59, then all numbers starting or ending with 5 are considered called numbers, also those ending with 9. There are no numbers that begin with 9, in bingo. The players get to daub out several numbers, in this instance!