Bingo

.-----------------------------.
|  B  |  I  |  N  |  G  |  O  |
|-----+-----+-----+-----+-----|
|  4  | 22  |  35 |  58 |  72 |
|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
|  12 | 18  |  33 |  47 |  64 |
|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
|  7  | 19  | FREE|  49 |  70 |
|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
|  5  | 24  |  43 |  57 |  69 |
|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
|  10 | 29  |  30 |  59 |  66 |
'-----'-----'-----'-----'-----'

+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|01|  |21|  |42|50|  |  |83|
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|  |14|  |35|  |51|  |77|90|
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|06|16|  |  |49|  |62|79|  |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

• Each card has three lines, each with five numbers on it.
• Each column on a card has between one and three numbers, which increase as you proceed down the card.
• Each column on a six-card holds a set of numbers: 1-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, or 80-90. Note that the first column has nine, the last eleven.
• On a six-card, all the numbers from 1-90 feature, with no repeats.

In Scrabble, this is the name given to any play that uses all 7 tiles. Such a play is awarded the usual point value, plus a 50 point bonus.

Recognizing bingos is a critical part of the serious Scrabble player's game; hundreds of lists have been made of common six-letter combinations (e.g., the SATIRE list, the SALINE list, etc.) out of which a bingo can be made if a single letter is added. Thus, the beginning of the SALINE list might run like this:

SALINE

B: LESBIAN
C: INLACES, SANICLE, SCALENI
D: DENIALS, SNAILED

...and so on.

As a rule of thumb, only play an S or a blank if it's part of a bingo, since these tiles are both rare and useful.

In Britain 3 million people are thought to regularly play bingo and it is the favoured pastime of many pensioners. While some benefits in processing speed were found in all subjects, the benefits of bingo playing were greatest in the elderly. Frequent brain use as required by bingo is thought to decrease the rate at which cognitive skills such as pattern recognition and response time are lost with aging

Hand-eye coordination is also improved. All this is added to the fact that bingo is a great opportunity for socializing.

Bingo's origins go way back to Italy in the year 1530, then the game Lo Giuco de Lotto was run as a sort of state-run lottery. By the late eighteenth century, the game had migrated to France and mutated into something quite similar to the bingo of today, with the cards laid out as they currently are in Britain.

In the 1800s Germany used bingo variants as teaching aids in schools, to help children learn spelling and times tables.

In 1929, Edwin Lowe, a toy seller, visited a carnival in New York and observed a game where people put beans on squares of a card to mark numbers being called out. The first person to fill a line and shout "Beano!" won. Lowe tried the game out on his friends, and they all enjoyed it. At some point, one of the guests got a little over-excited when she won and shouted "Bingo!" instead. Lowe heard her and decided to call his game as Bingo

Lowe himself ran a Bingo hall in New York. He also franchised out the Bingo name to competitors for $1 a year. By the 1940 there were regular bingo games all over the USA.

In 1930, Lowe tried to devise a set of Bingo cards which prevented multiple winners in one game. He asked Carl Leffler, a mathematician at Columbia University, to design him a set of 6000 unique cards. Leffler was being paid per card, and in those (pre-computer) days, the only way to generate the cards way with slow, tedious algorithms. As time went on, it got harder and harder to find new unique cards, and Leffler was eventually charging $100 per card. There is a legend that the hunt for the cards caused his mental illness.

These days, in Britain at least, Bingo exists mainly to provide ladies of a certain age something to do on a Wednesday night. They go along with special marker pens with 1one inch tips, which they use to stamp their cards. Bingo is very competitive.

It has also taken over a lot of the old pre-WWII cinemas and converted them into Bingo halls, though their premises are nowadays being bought up by trendy sports clubs.