Bingo card generator

What this does

The box beside the board takes a word list, one to a line. Every card is dealt from it, no two alike, and the PDF is written in this page. What you type is used by code running in the page you are reading and goes nowhere else, there is nothing here to send it to.

As it stands the board is set to Christmas bingo cards, 5 by 5, 30 cards, 4 to a sheet: 24 squares a card, 8 sheets, 9 pages counting the caller’s sheet. At four to a sheet the squares are 17.8 by 20.47 mm and the words set at 7.33 pt, which is the cost of getting four cards onto one page.

How long your list needs to be

Longer than the card, and by more than you might think. A five-by-five card with a free middle has 24 squares:

• Fewer than 24 words, the card cannot be filled. The press refuses. It will not repeat a word to make up the difference, because a card with the same word twice on it fills two squares on one call.
• Exactly 24 words, every card carries the same 24 words and every player finishes on the same call. Refused as well.
• 25 words, 25 different cards are possible, and no more.
• 30 words, 593,775.
• 36 words, 1,251,677,700.

The count under the box works this out as you type. Ask for more cards than your list can make, and the press says how many it can make rather than quietly handing you repeats.

Two cards that read alike are still one card

Cards are compared by what is on them, not by where it sits. Two cards holding the same 24 words in a different arrangement fill up on exactly the same 24 calls, so the press counts them as the same card and draws another.

The shuffle number

The controls carry a shuffle number, and the same number always deals the same cards. Write it down with the date and you can reprint one card from the set months later without reprinting the other 29.