Zahlen, bitte! Winnie the Pooh in reply to 42: The history of (buzzword) bingo

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One of the beneficial contributions of mathematics to the development of society is buzzword bingo. It was developed in 1993 by mathematician Tom Davis at workstation manufacturer Silicon Graphics to spice up boring strategy sessions. With the help of a program written in C, buzzwords – generalities – were printed on a card divided into 5*5 fields.

Zahlen, bitte!

In this section, we present amazing, impressive, informative and funny figures ("Zahlen") from the fields of IT, science, art, business, politics and, of course, mathematics every Tuesday. The wordplay "Zahlen, bitte!" for a section about numbers is based on the ambiguity of the German word "Zahlen." On one hand, "Zahlen" can be understood as a noun in the sense of digits and numerical values, which fits the theme of the section. On the other hand, the phrase "Zahlen, bitte!" is reminiscent of a waiter's request in a restaurant or bar when they are asked to bring the bill. Through this association, the section acquires a playful and slightly humorous undertone that catches the readers' attention and makes them curious about the presented numbers and facts.

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The buzzwords had to be crossed out when someone used them. If there was a row, “Bingo!” was shouted out loud. Depending on how you read it, this bingo variant became famous in a very special way: in 1994, a buzzword bingo appeared in a Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams, which in turn was picked up by the Wall Street Journal. In 1996, computer scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a bingo card hack when it was announced that US Vice President Al Gore was to give the graduation speech.

When several students shouted “Bingo!”, Gore looked around in irritation and asked the amused audience if he had used a buzzword. With “knowledge worker”, “information highway”, “tertiary” and “infrastructure” as well as “infobahn” as an additional word, his speech was well stocked.

The birth of buzzword bingo

According to mathematician Tom Davis, his buzzword bingo was inspired by bridal bingo, which is often played at weddings in the USA. His program, written in C, was adapted for the nascent World Wide Web by his friend Chris Pirazzi. According to his reading, the aforementioned Dilbert comic provided the breakthrough. Others blamed the MIT hackers for the spread. In any case, the phrase matrix established itself as an excellent way to stay awake even in boring conferences.

Bingo is a time-honored game whose roots can be traced back to the “Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia”, which in turn is based on the Lotto de Firenze. It was played from 1530 in the destroyed city republic of Florence to repair the broken roads and bridges. It moved from Italy to France around 1700 as “Le Lotto” and arrived in Germany around 1800, not as a lottery game but as a teaching aid for mathematics and foreign language lessons.

According to the bingo saga, a bingo variant with 12 numbers and 12 possible combinations migrated from Germany's fairgrounds to America after the First World War, where it was also played at fairgrounds under the name “Beano” with beans for the numbers called out. Players were given a game board for a few cents, and the first person to form a line shouted “Beano!” and won a Kewpie doll.

Bingo as a distraction during the great economic depression

Edwin S. Lowe, a Jewish emigrant from Poland, learned about this game in 1929 at a fair in Jacksonville in the US state of Georgia. He observed how the players could hardly stop playing Beano. The simple, cheap game was a welcome diversion during the Great Depression. Back in New York, Lowe began experimenting with playing cards, number stamps and tokens, and later balls. During a test game, a winner called out “Bingo!”, a name that Lowe liked exceptionally well. He wrote a short introduction to the game and sold a bingo version with twelve squares on the playing card for one dollar, the luxury version with 24 squares per card for two dollars.

For this version, the number range was extended to 75. Bingo quickly became popular as it was not considered a game of chance, as the game historian Roger Snowden writes in his bingo book: it was mainly offered on games afternoons in many church congregations, which used the stakes paid for the playing cards to balance their finances. It was a churchman who contacted Lowe and complained that there were far too many winners in his congregation. He felt that the numbers on the printed cards should be “more random”. Lowe then contacted Carl Leffler, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University in New York.

He is said to have developed an algorithm that enabled Lowe's company to print over a thousand different playing cards. This fiddling around with 552,446,474,061,129,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations is said to have almost made the good professor lose his mind. It is a pity that the existence of this important mathematician has not yet been proven, in contrast to numerous mathematical tasks related to bingo.

Lowe himself landed another hit alongside bingo when he bought the idea for a game from a married couple, which they played on their yacht and called “The Yacht Game”. It became a huge success as Yahtzee (Yahtzee). Other businesses were less successful: after the Second World War, Lowe bought a hotel in Las Vegas where no games of chance were played, not even the commercial bingo of the neighboring casinos. It had to close after a few years.

An important game of chance in Great Britain

With a number range of up to 90, bingo is still the dominant game of chance in the UK today. Twice a day, 120-180 bingo clubs are brought together for the National Bingo Game, with the game only being suspended on December 25. Before the electronic scoreboard was used, the “bingo caller” had to prevent confusion when calling out a drawn number, as can occur with 15 and 50. These bingo calls provide a deep insight into the British soul and its attachment to the duodecimal system. 42 is therefore not the meaning of life, but Winnie-the-Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh in Harry Rowohlt's translation), while the hacker number 23 simply refers to Psalm 23 (The Lord is my shepherd). With “Dancing Queen” (17) or “Here comes Herbie” (53), pop-cultural references have made it into the calls, which have been forgotten in the age of online bingo. Incidentally, a British online variant has led to the highest bingo winnings paid out to date: 5,883,044 British pounds with a stake of 30 pence.

The helpful call names for numbers bring us back to buzzword bingo. Because not only are there buzzwords, there are also swear words that lead to bullshit bingo. A bingo card that helps you stay awake during absurd 5G conspiracy speeches or a bingo card generator for Trump speeches should be mentioned here. Given his limited vocabulary, this should have been rather easy to program.
Here at heise online you can also find a keyword directory for the buzzword-laden digital policy of the black-red federal government. Bingo, Mr. Digital Minister!

(mki)