a Bingo game with names instead of numbers

[happyscooter]

If I wanted to make BINGO cards and say put names of cities instead of numbers, would I need to put Nashville only on the B line? Or could I put it on any 5 lines? If I did not have a consistent city name in a particular line, would anyone EVER win?

[Peace77]

Huh??

Obviously, Nashville starts with N and should go in the N column.

B would be for Boise, Bethesda, etc.

[Virgil Showlion]

On an ordinary bingo card you have 15 numbers possible for each row, five of which are selected at random for each card.

Row 1: 1-15
Row 2: 16-30
Row 3: 31-45
Row 4: 46-60
Row 5: 61-75

Hence you would need 75 cities (corresponding to 75 numbers). Group them into 5 sets of 15 any way you wish. Then for each card, select a unique random combination of 5 cities for each row from the set for that row.

So for example, if your row 1 cities are:

Denver, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Detroit, Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, Milwaukee

You might choose for row 1 on one particular card: Detroit, Boston, Denver, Seattle, Charlotte



Calling out, you need only choose a letter (from 'BINGO') at random, and any city from your list of 75 cities at random. e.g. Under the N, Houston. Under the I, Fort Lauderdale, etc.

If you need to generate a lot of cards, this site gives you a tool to do so. Unfortunately, it only runs in modes where any city can go into any grid square (mode A), or where each column has its own cities (mode B), neither of which is traditional bingo.

The problem, in simple terms, is that with 75 cities and a typical number of players (10-50), mode A will take forever, and mode B will be over very quickly, probabilistically speaking.

What I could recommend is using the generator at the link, use mode A (any city in any grid square), and give it 8 or 9 cities in each of the five boxes it provides (for a total of 40-45 cities). This should result in a reasonable-length game.

[happyscooter]

Virgil, my head just exploded.

[Virgil Showlion]

Oh.

Short answer is: go to the site in the link, type in the names of 40 cities into the boxes they give you, and the site will generate bingo cards that you can print out.