Section Scoring

Section scoring is the Bingo Pinball alternative to lining numbers up: a win is counted inside an irregular colored area of the Bingo Cards, and the lit numbers only have to fall in the same section — they need not touch each other at all.^[1][2]

That one relaxation changes what the player is doing. Holding two numbers of a line means shooting for one specific hole; a section of six numbers wanting any three of them means several holes will serve, and the reading of a near-miss card opens up accordingly.^[3]

Origins

The method came in with the Magic Screen on Carnival Queen (1958, Bally), a painted metal panel sliding across a card of fixed numbers.^[4] A screen machine carries both scoring styles at once: in the home position the card pays conventional colored lines, and as the screen slides left the lines give way to sections.^[5] Sections could be sweetened as well as shaped — a super-section paid two lit numbers as though they were three, three as though they were four.^[6][7]

Afterwards

Section scoring outlived the mechanism that introduced it. Mystic Lines machines kept the colored areas but held them still, moving the numbers behind a painted panel instead, and abandoned In-Line Scoring entirely.^[8]