Slingo — What It Is, and Where It Came From

That's Slingo — half fruit machine, half bingo card, and more fun than that makes it sound.

A confession: we built our own version once, years back, before Slingo was a name anyone knew. I'd spotted it on a machine out in Vegas — reels along the bottom, a grid up top, funky seventies music — and thought it looked a good laugh. So we had a go.

Ours had no prizes, just a bit of fun and a natter while you waited for the next bingo game. Good job we didn't hang onto it — this being before Gaming Realms bought the rights and the rules got tight. Imagine the takedown letters now.

So what actually is Slingo?

Slingo is a mash-up of a slot machine and a bingo card — a five-by-five grid up top, a row of slot reels underneath.

You spin the reels, and any numbers that land get marked off. Complete a line — across, down or diagonal — and that's a Slingo. Rack up enough and you climb a prize ladder. You get a set number of spins, and when they run out, you take what you've won or pay for another.

That's the whole game, and dead simple is half its charm. No fiddly paylines to work out — just spin, mark off, and chase your lines. Same little thrill as waiting on one number in bingo, only the machine's doing the calling. If you can play bingo, you can play Slingo.

Where it came from

Slingo's not new, either. A chap called Sal Falciglia dreamed it up in New Jersey in 1994. The rights later landed with Gaming Realms over here — the same crowd behind Foxy Bingo, which, funny enough, was nearly given a far ruder name before someone thought better of it. I'll leave that story on the Foxy page.

And no, they're not all the same game. There's dozens now, themed around the big slot names — Rainbow Riches, Deal or No Deal, all sorts. Truth be told, they've built more Slingo games than bingo ones, which tells you how well it's caught on.

A word on where it sits

One thing to know: for all it's got bingo in its blood, Slingo is classed as a casino game, not bingo. So if you've set a slots or casino limit, it counts towards that. Handy to keep in the back of your head.

And if it's our own games you're after, there's Bingle — think of a certain daily word game, fiddled with enough to call it our own. Our answer to a Slingo, you might say. Only nobody's coming after us for that one.

Anyway. If that sounds like your thing, have a scroll through the Slingo games and we'll point you where they're played. Eyes down, reels spinning.