Road Kill Bingo is a peculiar variation of world famous game Bingo and was created from the result of utter boredom during long distance drives. Annoyed of being nagged by your passengers about ‘how far have we reached?’? Road kill Bingo is a brilliant full stop to such nagging. The game is a thriller among people of all ages when it comes to rescuing them from being bored. Ideally, driving through forests or hills are good locations for playing the game.
Rules
Each player is given a Bingo card containing 5 rows and 5 columns. 24 of the 25 squares in the card should have either a picture or drawing or name of an animal in a random order. The middle square is left vacant and can be considered as any animal decided by the player. Each player should have a dissimilar card for the game. The player gets to mark the animals on his or her card by spotting the same dead animal on the road during the drive. Usually, only the person, who spots the animal at first, is allowed to mark the respective animal on the card. This might lead to arguments over which player spotted the animal first. Hence, to avoid such confusion, some people allow all the players to mark the animal on his or her card.
In order to win the game, a player should have marked off all the animals in a peculiar patter pre-decided before the game. The pattern could be a simple horizontal line on the card or any of the two diagonal or just the four corners, etc. For a horizontal line, the player should have all the boxes in any of the 5 rows as marked. A diagonal pattern is achieved when all the animals in the 5 diagonal boxes have been marked. For four corners, the first and last animals of the first and last row should have been spotted by the player. Once the player achieves any of the decided patterns, he or she will have to shout out ‘BINGO’. This is important and without calling ‘Bingo’ the player is not declared as the winner.
Sometimes, quarrels may arise if the player manages to spot the live animal instead of the dead one. Such rules should be decided before the game. The passengers in the front seat might have an undue advantage in the game, while the driver must assign his or her card to some other player for marking. It would be a good idea to use animals found more commonly in that particular region in order to ensure an interesting game. Saudi Arabian soldiers are known to have played the west coast variation of this game during their operation called ‘Desert Storm’.
Though many players find the game slightly disgusting, many others enjoy it during long drives. However, it is advisable to disallow children less than 4 years of age from playing the game. Several ready made packages of the game are available in markets and on the internet.
