Bingo calls: from “Kelly’s eye” to “top of the shop”

Bingo calls are nicknames callers use for numbers. In British 90-ball halls 11 is “legs eleven”, 22 “two little ducks” and 88 “two fat ladies”, mostly after the shape of the digits or a rhyme. In Russian lotto 11 is “drumsticks” and 90 is “grandad”. American 75-ball callers usually just say the letter and the number: “B-7”.

Anubis City does not speak the numbers at all. The ball rolls out with a soft knock and a little bell, and its letter and number appear on screen.

Partly for clarity. In a noisy room “fifteen” and “fifty” are easy to mix up; “young and keen, fifteen” is not. Mostly for fun. Many British calls come from the forces, where the game was played as housey-housey, from Cockney rhyming slang and from music hall, radio and television. Some are a century old, some arrived with a pop song, and every hall keeps its own mix. Players answer a few of them out loud, which is half the point.

For some calls the story is plain. Two fat ladies and legs eleven are pictures of the digits. Key of the door remembers the days when you came of age at 21. Heinz varieties is the old “57 Varieties” slogan of the food company, and steps for 39 is Buchan’s novel, better known today as Hitchcock’s film.

Others are told with more confidence than evidence. Doctor’s orders is usually traced to the No. 9 pill, a laxative army doctors handed out in the First World War — plausible, but hard to prove. Was she worth it? is explained by a marriage licence that cost five shillings and sixpence; nobody has produced the receipt. Kelly’s eye is a real puzzle. Ned Kelly’s armour with its single slit is the favourite answer, but it is a guess, and other Kellys have been put forward.

Calls never stand still. The den at number 10 takes the name of each new prime minister, and holiday camps and bingo chains have launched modern calls more than once. Some halls have quietly dropped calls that used to raise a cheeky shout from the floor.

Russian lotto has its own tradition. The host pulls a barrel out of the bag and, instead of “eleven”, says «барабанные палочки», drumsticks. There is no official list: families and towns have their own versions. These are the ones you hear most often.

These names live in families, not in rulebooks. In the lotto scene of Chekhov’s The Seagull (1896) Masha calls the numbers plainly — “Twenty-two!”, “Eighty-eight!” — and the folk names are nowhere in the text. In Ukraine lotto is played with the same sets. As far as we can tell, the sayings are heard in Russian or translated on the spot; we found no written collection of Ukrainian ones, so we do not invent any.

American bingo has few nicknames. The caller reads the letter and the number, often twice — “B… seven. B-7.” — and the ball lights up on a board, so nobody depends on hearing it right. Speed matters more than wit: callers are usually advised to leave about five seconds between numbers, and more when players have many cards or are children.

Not by voice. Each ball rolls out of the cage with its own sound — a soft roll, a knock on the tray and a small bell — and shows its letter and number: “G-52” in English, «Г-52» in Russian and Ukrainian. The board of 75 numbers lights up, and in manual halls the letter above the column flashes for two seconds so you know where to look. The AI residents in the hall do talk, though: “One number left…”.

At a bingo night at home you are the caller, and a few calls make it twice as much fun. Print cards and a caller’s sheet with our card generator, pick a dozen calls from the table above and let the room shout the answers. The history page tells how the game got from Italian lotto to British halls.