It's that time of year again…
Download and print your bingo cards here!
We've been doing this for years, and a couple of years ago we started to share this tradition. We hope you'll join in the fun…
How to play
Give at least one bingo card to each player. Ensure all players are topped up with gin and dubonnet (the Queen's favorite tipple), well-stocked with chocolates, and overstuffed with a good turkey dinner. Position all players on the sofa, tune into the Queen’s speech at 3pm GMT and let the sarcasm, fun and arguments commence.
You may play however you like, but here are some tips:
- decide whether you will include words not spoken by the Queen herself.
- decide whether you will add your own wildcards (you must share these with your group before the speech).
- no spurious attempts to find out the speech beforehand (especially to those who work at/have contacts at the BBC).
- any disputes must be settled unanimously (family arguments are another Christmas tradition of course).
- choose your own prize. Our winners get nothing, but your winner could be treated like Royalty for the duration of Boxing Day, or the loser could perform a forfeit.
If you're not in the UK…BBC World News America should be broadcasting the Queen's speech at 12.20pm EST (17.20 GMT)
Unfortunately, while the UK will get to enjoy Queenie in 3D for the first time ever, those of use over the pond will only get it in old-fashioned style telly. What a shame.
How it's done
We took the Queen's Speeches from 1982-2011, extracted 90 of her most commonly used words, and added in a few wildcards based on events from 2012 and suggestions from friends.
We then plugged these words into a simple bingo card maker.
If you like, you can also see 2011's Queen Speech Bingo page and cards here.
Feel free to share amongst all your friends, or at least to any quirky Angophiles you might know. Please let me know if you decide to play along, and how well you do!
oh man I have to send this to Jon! we couldn't play (half of his family works at the BBC) but they take the Queen's Speech very seriously - we can't open presents till afterwards! And then I spend a few hours walking around trying to mimic her accent. I love the tradition!
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoyed Christmas, and the Queen's speech. I've seen some of your pics of your English country Christmas and it looks like a wonderful time inded.
DeleteI love your blog because it reveals so many new things to me. This sounds like a lot of fun; I'll get my hubby and some friends to play along :D
ReplyDeleteGreatest comment ever. Thank you so much Elise :)
DeleteI have a feeling that, in the past, BBC World News have shown the Queen's Christmas Message at 1500GMT (or a few minutes after), even though it's not in the listings.
ReplyDeleteI was stupid enough to get confused over timezones when trying to figure out when it's on over here. I still get stumped by timezones.
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