Human bingo

The set on this page

Icebreaker bingo cards, 4 by 4, 8 cards, 1 to a sheet. Sixteen squares, no free one a four-by-four has no middle, so all 16 have to be signed. Eight cards at one to a sheet is 8 sheets and 9 pages. The card is 186 by 222.9 mm, nearly the whole page, with squares of 46.5 by 53.47 mm and the type at 21.43 pt.

Why this one is set differently from everything else

The squares hold sentences rather than words, “has slept in a tent this year”, “writes with their left hand”, and a sentence needs room to wrap and room to be signed underneath. That is why this is the only set on the site that goes one card to a sheet by default. Four to a sheet would fit, and would leave nowhere to write a name.

What is on the list

Thirty prompts rather than 36, because they are long: has a twin, speaks three languages, can juggle, was born in another country, hates coriander, grows their own vegetables, still has a childhood toy. None of them ask anything anybody would rather not answer in a room of strangers, which is the whole skill in writing this list.

Thirty prompts filling 16 squares gives 145,422,675 possible cards, so the eight here are eight genuinely different ones, which matters more in this game than in any other, since the players are comparing cards with each other by design.

How it is played

Everyone takes a card and finds a person each square is true of, who signs or initials it. One signature a person is the usual rule, which is what stops one sociable person filling somebody’s whole card. First to a line, or first to fill the card if you have the time.

The file

38,640 bytes over 9 pages. The last page lists all 30 prompts. Black only; PDF, PNG and SVG.