Housie Number Calling Phrases
Rosalyn Pomposo
Tambola is a popular party game in India. Its also known as Bingo / Housie across the world and is a slow casino game, played by a person calling out numbers and players scoring out numbers on a ticket. Each player gets a unique ticket and a range of prizes can be given away. To name a few they are
Bingo calls date back to the re-importation of the game to the UK in the 1950s. Housey-housey, a version of Bingo played by servicemen during World War II, was very popular, and many bingo call nicknames have origins in military terms, rhymes and jokes.
Dirty Gertie is used for number 30, and refers to a song, Dirty Gertie from Bizerte, sung by allied troops during World War II. Some callers might use Burlington Bertie, recalling another song from the Music Hall era: Burlington Bertie from Bow.
Due to its surging popularity in the UK at this time, many bingo references come from the 1950s and 1960s. 76 Trombones refers to a song from the 1957 musical The Music Man, and 77 Sunset Strip name-checks the television detective series of that era.
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hi ,thanks for the useful info.i needed some clarifications,would be grateful if u oblige.have to conduct a tambola event and have done intensive research on net abt it,but strangely have a lot of confusion regarding king and queens corner.afew of my friends who have played a lot of tambola say that the corners are opposite to what u've mentioned in your blog.so which is right?HELP
Hi Jacob, there is no strict rule as such. After all they are the variations we have created for ourselves. Yes, some people do play the king's and queen's corners the opp way mentioned here. It all depends on you, who is conducting the game to set the rules. All the best buddy!
hey this is amazing! i was looking for a bollywood theme based tambola, i'm so glad that i found it on ur blog but there is a bit of a prob, as after 13 i'm denied access to view the list for other numbers!...would appreciate it if u could help me out by sending me the entire list!
hey nivedita :)
i love the concept of your bollywood tambola and a i am hosting a bollywood theme party i would be glad if you mailed me the entire list on my email id vinamra....@gmail.com ! thank you :D
hi loved ur ideas..they r lovely..i m hosting a floral theme based couple kiity party...could u plz give any idea of playing tambola with a variation may b related to theme...would b vey helpful
hello niveditha,I really enjoyed the bollywood tambola number calling. I will be announcing the same on saturday the 30 Jan. May i request you to kindly mail me the entire list. Regards.
My mail id is absol...@gmail.com
A typical housie/bingo ticket .., contains fifteen numbers, arranged in nine columns by three rows. Each row contains five numbers and four blank spaces. Each column contains either one, two, or very rarely three, numbers:
Once we select any random 5 cells in a 9 cell row, we will fill them with bingo numbers. Now, excel has a function to generate random numbers between 1 to 9 (=round(rand()*9,0)), but this is not good for us since each time we call this function we will get a random number between 1 to 9, where as we need a 5 random numbers without repetition between 1 to 9. The function is memoryless and could repeat numbers when called 5 times.
First I created all 2 number combinations and 3 number combinations. Since the numbers on Bingo ticket are always sorted from top to bottom in a column, I just had to list down 45 combinations (10C2) for 2 numbers and 120 combinations (10C3) for 3 numbers.
I really liked your Housie Tickets. However, the tickets printed out are too small and I can't seem to increase the size to the regular printed housie tickets. Can you help me out please? Thank You. Dina
I am having difficulties with sizing. I need eight tickets on A4 Landscape page. I am not too good with Excel but better with Libre Office Calc. I have tried to save to that format but it doesnt work. Can anyone send instructions that are not too technical?
[...] Play seems to be the focus of excel blogosphere last week. Debra at contextures has created an excel file to generate bingo cards (US style) in excel. Several others followed it up with their own versions of bing number generators. Follow the links, download the book and have some fun! Also, Generate UK / Indian style bingo cards [...]
Hey...
This is cool.. We were planning for a potluck event where I wanted to host this game but was thinking if I should go and buy it from the store just for this one time.. so as usual google'd to see if there was any generator and your's was the first hit... its cool and easy to print and I love it!!! Thanks a lot!!!
@Jo.. "I have removed number 90? from the list in order to reduce some complexity in generating the tickets." Generating 90 along with 80-89 creates a tricky problem of having 11 numbers in the last band while every other column has only 10 possible values.
I want to print more than a 1000 of these tickets, so dont want to click on refresh button 250 times.. so if once I click refresh, is it possible to generate 50 or so worksheet at a time? So that I can click refresh 4 times and get my 1000 tickets?
There is an online generator at , which generates the numbers in blocks of 6 cards, where every number from 1-90 is used. This is how the UK style books are usually printed, so that if you buy 6 tickets you are sure to have every number once and only once. Makes the generation routine a little trickier.
Hi Chandoo,
really liked your bingo sheet. wanted to make a program of it in delphi or vb. i cannot figure how the randomizing of the numbers is to be done properly.
1. Row wise select ion of 5 numbers and place random (0-99) in these five places
2. random selection of 15 numbers and place then as 10,20,30 so on
has a function been done by you?
These tickets can not be used to play standard 90 ball Bingo, the number 90 is missing and the tickets must be produced in blocks of 6 which contain every number from 1 to 90. Also you can not have any columns with three blanks ( no numbers ) on the same ticket.
I'm really impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your weblog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself? Either way keep up the nice quality writing, it is rare to see a great blog like this one these days.
Hi Chandoo,
I wish to Customise these tickets for one of my wedding ceremony.
Basically I wanted to replace numbers with Names/Movies etc. So in total I will have 89 names and when the excel generates the numbers, the names should get replaced with it depending on how it is configured.
eg : For Number 1 = DDLJ
2 = DON , etc
Can you please suggest the command to be written in excel which will support the above idea. It would be a great help.
column 1 should contain 1 to 10, column 2 should contain 11 to 20 and so on... obviously you took out number 90 for formula convenience, but i think putting the right numbers into the right column would do the same, yet this way you make an authentic housie ticket... thanks for the post though, it helps me creating my own ticket generator.
I am organizing a fundraiser in our company. I have planned for tambola and the Spread Sheet provided by Chandoo is just awesome for the task. We have 1200+ staff so I guess I need to print this for 24 or so times. I only have two requirements.
1. Can the ticket be numbered so that we can keep track who has taken which ticket.
2. At this large number what is the probability or repeated tickets. You know we don't want to spend all in prices.
I would be looking for options but any quick help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Pawan
Also, I'm looking to create a music version of the same game where I would feed in say 90 songs into the sheet and print song names instead of numbers and play the songs instead of saying the numbers. Any assistance with making this would be appreciated.
It's nice to create tickets easily. I found a random number generator which is cool and easy to use. So thought of adding it to this page so people are able to find tickets and board togather. check at -number-generator
Hi,
thanks for sharing this awesome excel for Bingo / Housie Ticket Generation.
Just noted that many tickets have columns with no value at all.
I understand that each column must have atleast one value.
Can you please see and share an edited excel please.
Many thanks for the awesome stuff you are doing.
Cheers
Mahesh
There is a major flaw in your system. It does not have the number 90. I know you have removed it save the complexity but as it been more then 10 years since you provided us with this, I am sure you have evolved yourself to get the 90 in the tickets.
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