Old-Fashioned Sayings Bingo Card Generator

About Old-Fashioned Sayings bingo

All 46 Old-Fashioned Sayings bingo words

Every entry from Ants in your pants to Whole nine yards, grouped by first letter. Edit them in the generator above: drop Heavens to Betsy if it does not suit your group, or add your own.

• A: Ants in your pants
• B: Balderdash, Bee's knees, Bigger than a breadbox, Busy as a bee
• C: Cat got your tongue?, Cat's pajamas, Clean as a whistle, Cooking with gas, Cut the mustard
• D: Dilly-dally, Don't touch that dial, Dressed to the nines
• E: Elbow grease
• F: Fiddlesticks, Fit as a fiddle, For crying out loud, Full of beans
• G: Gee whiz
• H: Happy as a clam, Heavens to Betsy, Hold your horses, Holy mackerel, Horsefeathers, Hunky-dory
• I: In a jiffy
• J: Jeepers creepers
• K: Kit and caboodle
• L: Land sakes alive, Like a broken record, Long in the tooth
• M: Madder than a wet hen, Mind your p's and q's
• O: Okey-dokey
• P: Poppycock, Pretty as a picture
• R: Raining cats and dogs
• S: Sharp as a tack, Shenanigans, Sight for sore eyes, Slow as molasses, Snug as a bug in a rug
• T: Thingamajig
• U: Under the weather
• W: Whippersnapper, Whole nine yards

Old-Fashioned Sayings bingo at a glance

How long Old-Fashioned Sayings bingo lasts

150 shuffled call orders, played on the first 60 cards of this set. With 30 players the first line comes after a median 13 calls (about 2 minutes at one call every 10 seconds); the first blackout needs 42 calls (about 7 minutes).

How to host Old-Fashioned Sayings bingo

1. 1

   Print the Old-Fashioned Sayings cards

   Give each player one card; a free set prints up to 30, no two alike. Card 1 above starts with Long in the tooth, Like a broken record, Hold your horses, Cut the mustard and Thingamajig.

2. 2

   Print the caller sheet

   All 46 entries appear on it in shuffled order, opening with Cooking with gas, Elbow grease, Horsefeathers, In a jiffy and Sight for sore eyes; tick each one as you read it out.

3. 3

   After calling a saying, ask the room what it means and when they last heard it; “Cooking with gas” and “Don't touch that dial” both come from older technology.

4. 4

   For ESL learners, pair each idiom with a plain-English meaning on the board, such as “Under the weather” meaning feeling slightly ill.

5. 5

   Mix generations at each table so younger players can ask what a “Whippersnapper” or “Kit and caboodle” is, and older players can explain.

6. 6

   Call until someone shouts bingo

   With 30 cards, expect the first line near call 13 (Heavens to Betsy in this set's order) and a blackout near call 42; check the winner's squares against your ticked list.

Old-Fashioned Sayings bingo variations

• Old-Fashioned Sayings variation

  Use it in a sentence: before marking a square, the player must say a sentence using the saying correctly, such as “Hold your horses, dinner isn't ready”; the group decides if it counts.

• Blackout round

  Card 1 needs all 24 squares, Long in the tooth to Jeepers creepers; on average one card fills after 45.1 of the 46 calls (98% of the deck).

• Quick 4x4 round

  A 4x4 card needs 16 of the 46 entries and no free space; one card is full after about 44.2 calls instead of 45.1.

First 15 calls of this Old-Fashioned Sayings set

Seed "old-fashioned-sayings" gives this order, the same one the caller sheet prints. With these calls, card 17 of the first 30 completes the diagonal from the top left (Heavens to Betsy, Horsefeathers, Holy mackerel and Cat's pajamas) on call 15, and card 12 is the first full card on call 43.

Themes like Old-Fashioned Sayings bingo

Ranked by category, occasion and audience; none of them repeats an entry from this list, so pasting two into the Edit words box gives a longer game.