BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 10:33 AM

I did series of rhyming clues in plastic easter eggs for my kids every year, so they could search for and find their easter baskets.

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: Paul Burke
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 08:00 AM

Instead of separate numbers in each cracker, put in a clue as to where to find the numbers, which can be in batches so you don't need so many crackers, and which are hidden round the room. You could complicate things by making the references cryptic clues. Also put in a forfeit to be paid by the loser of the cracker pull- say, drink a pint of creme de menthe and cider, sing a lewd ditty, or submit to being grilled by the Special Branch- to add to the fun.

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 07:29 AM

Rapaire, bingo numbers go up to 90 ("Top of the shop, Nine Oh")
Each standard bingo card shows only 15 of these numbers and sets of tickets are carefully arranged to minimise the chance of two winners sharing a prize. (this is why tickets should be issued in numerical sequence)

Cheers
Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 04:20 AM

LTS

Should the porridge oats be wet or dry?

Tam

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 04:08 PM

Ah.. nothing worse than a drunken, mumming, dress-wearing folkie - unless he's borrowed your dress.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 03:05 PM

I used those whistle crackers a few years back.. Quite funny the six of us playing 8 whistles one conducting and playing while all pretty drunk.

This year I want to get the Hawkins Bazaar Sprouts race crackers. Wind up sprouts with feet ... they race to the center of a dinner plate target. I think that is how I remember them.

What is really good is to get a bearded folkie who does mumming in drag good and drunk. Dress him in your daughter's prezzies, one black lace and teal taffeta coctail gown and black lace shrug, chunky teal necklace and long fuzzy black scarf on his head to look like a wig.

Take a picture then send it to him as his christmas card the next year. He thought I did it with photo shop. No memory whatever of dressing up.

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 10:42 AM

Why not just do away with the crackers and all the waste paper they entail, get a few simple gifts (bottle opener, mousetrap, old sausage), put them in a tub of porridge oats and get people to shout BANG as they dip their hands in to choose?

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:37 AM

Whoops! I believe that there are a total of 65 numbers in bingo, and each card does not contain every number. So you'd have 24 numbers out of 65 possible on each card, leaving 41 unused for each. So for 15 players you'd need...hmmm...24! possible combinations for each card, I think...that means 1 chance in 6.20448402 × 10^23...oh, hell...

Get a revolver and one bullet. The odds of winning are better.

Subject: RE: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:31 AM

Five rows and five columns = 25 numbers, less the free space, so you'd need 24 squares per card. Each card has to be different, so with, oh, say, 15 players you'd need at least 15 x 24 = 360 cards.

Wouldn't Russian Roulette be easier?

Subject: BS: Bingo & Christmas Crackers
From: Mr Red
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:20 AM

Christmas crackers - probably a UK/Oz/NZ/SA etc Xmas thing - a bit like a fortune cookie that goes Bang when you and another person pull it, frippery falls out of it and usually a week joke and you can't eat it. Joy has used the musical type Where the each cracker has a whistle and a number. The conductor has to read music by numbers and point to the number on the whistle which is then blown. Instant music (not).

However she want something different - I thought what about Bingo. Number inside each cracker and cards dished-out before you start. Over quickly so everyone joins in.

Any one ever seen such a thing. Otherwise I will make them myself. Probably needs a lot of cheap crackers, contents unimportant, I will slip the numbers in myself. Don't need 100 numbers and cards would have to be suitably truncated. But how to run the permutations (Oh OK combinations) to Guarantee one winner? 12 - 20 players.

Ideas anyone?

I could do a Montecarlo analysis in VBA in a spreadsheet but it is not my forte. And it would run and run and run. The iterations worry me.