How to play Bingola

Preparation and setup

Bingola is run by an organiser at a social gathering or event with 2 to 200 players. The organiser should prepare wordlists for themselves and tickets for the players, as follows:

1. Bingola wordlists or a wordlist console: Each freely available wordlist creates 10 to 15 minutes of gameplay at your event. Choose from one of the following:
• the online Wordlist generating console (recommended), OR
• Printed 72-word paper lists found with your purchased game, OR
• Wordlists you can directly print from this website, OR
• the Wordlist generating Microsoft Office application (for commercial clients only)
2. Bingola paper tickets: Purchase at least ticket one per game for each player. At the start of the event or each game, hand out tickets to the players.
3. The organiser may need to let everyone know in advance to bring their own dauber or pen of some sort. Markers are not included in the retail game. It may be handy to have a few spares, just in case.

How to run a game

• The organiser slowly reads out the words from their online or printed wordlist. If the word is a homophone or has varied spelling (like towed or cue) the word should be spelled out.
• After hearing a word, a player daubs or marks off any matching letter or letter-vowel combination found on their ticket. For example, if the word is frog, then a player can tick off F, R, Ro or G on their ticket. A player can mark off two or more boxes on their ticket in the same turn, but any vowel must follow the letter within the called word.

• When a player ticks off every letter on their ticket, they shout "Bingola".
• Once the organiser verifies that the player daubed or marked off the letters correctly (a simple process) that player wins the game.

Ticket checking by the organiser

There is no need for the organiser to remember which letters and letter-combinations have been called out. Bingola reliably keeps track of this, so validating a ticket couldn't be easier. It only takes a few seconds at most.

1. Find the summary ticket. If using the wordlist console on your laptop or mobile device, the summary ticket is constantly updated at the top of your screen. →
   On printed wordlists, progressive summary tickets are on the right half of the page.
2. After a player calls "Bingola", check that each consonant on the ticket has been called. The consonants are all in order. If a consonant is followed by a vowel, check the vowel is listed too. For example, Wo matches with Wo, Weo, Wiou and Waeou. It also matches with Wa~u, which means W and any vowel.
3. On the printed wordlists (not devices), one or more matches will need to be verified directly from the left column. In the example below, the summary updates on the 39th word and "Bingola" is called on the 43rd word. Fe and Sa are validly checked off from the 40th and final 43rd word as follows:

4. If all eleven letters and letter-vowel combinations match, then the ticket has validly won the game. If not, continue playing until someone wins.
5. If two or more players call "Bingola" in the same turn they are joint winners, unless the organiser is using one of the various tie breaking methods.

More topics

Dictionaries

Wordlists are randomly selected from a Bingola dictionary. For children and beginners there are dictionary grades from 1 to 4 of increasing difficulty. The grade 1 dictionary has several hundred short, simple words. For adults, there is the senior dictionary with over nine thousands words. Take a peek at what to expect in each dictionary.

Tips and tricks

Bingola is easy to set up and play, but there are a few organiser tips and tricks to help make each game go smoothly. Click here to review pens v daubers, easy ways to hand out tickets or play multiple tickets.

Tie breaking

About one in ten games may end in a tie. This is normal, however the organiser can use one of the tie breaking methods to select a winner. The winner could be who shouts "Bingola" first, who matches the next word or who wins a coin-toss.

Quality and fixing faults

Bingola is handmade in Australia. Some colours may vary from images of the game. We're pretty good at fixing damage and faults before any deliveries to customers, however if you do find a fault, do not hesitate to let us know. We can easily send replacement elements on request.