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u/FarragutCircle

▲ 170 r/Fantasy

Hey everyone! We've got the bingo data ready for public release. Here it is:

The (mostly) uncorrected Bingo Data for the 2025 Bingo Challenge

I've made a few small corrections for some obviously misplaced titles/authors, though trying to change the anthologies to list the editors instead of all the authors defeated me in the time I had for this. (Please please please just list the editors for anthologies if there is one, LOL.)

That said, this is mostly raw data from the Bingo Card Turn-in Form, so typos and errors will proliferate. I've anonymized and randomized the order of the cards, but I did include some of the additional feedback answers like Favorite/Least Favorite Squares and (new this year) Themes.

What can you do with this?

Whatever you want, though please remember that all of r/Fantasy's rules remain (including Be Kind). If you see a card that used an author 4 times (despite repeat authors being one of the major rules of Bingo)--we already know, you don't need to tell us. 😄

If you make any posts about the data/stats, please link it in the comments here, we always love seeing what people do with it.

Some stats to get people started

  • We had 1548 cards submitted for the 2025 challenge from 1417 different people, regardless of completion, a 14% increase over 2024's, where we had 1353 cards from 1235 people.
  • 466 people (33%) stated it was their first time doing bingo. That's 7 percentage points lower than 2023’s (525 people; 39 percent). Roughly in line with historical averages, as 2024’s was the one of the biggest increases. In 2025, 326 people (23%) returned for a second shot at bingo!
  • 17 people said they have participated every year since the inaugural 2015 Bingo (regardless of completing a full card). Of those participants, though, 10 have managed a complete card every single year.
  • 347 people (22%) said they completed Hero Mode, meaning they reviewed every single book (or not a book) somewhere (e.g., r/Fantasy, Goodreads, StoryGraph, etc.). That's right in-line with 2024's data, which also showed 25% Hero Mode.
  • Favorites: "Impossible Places" was the favorite square for 162 cards (12%). Least favorite was "A Book in Parts" with 10 cards.
  • Least Favorites: "High Fashion" was most often listed for their least favorite square. The least common least-favorite was "LGBTQIA Protagonist" at 3 cards.
  • Multiple Cards: 79 people did at least two separate cards, with 52 two-carders, 18 three-carders, 3 four-carders, 3 five-carders, 2 six-carders, and 1 thirteen-carder. (Even for the multi-carders, however, not every submitted card is complete.)
  • Substitutions: The most often substituted square was "Published in ‘80s" at 61 total substitutions, with "Hidden Gem" and “Pirates” at 46 each. Only two squares had no substitutions among the cards received: “Down with the System” (and “Recycle a Square”; ignore the fact that I didn’t even allow the ability to sub it on the turn-in form).
  • Most Avoided Squares: Counting a combination of squares left blank and substitutions, the most avoided square was “Published in ‘80s” (140 cards), followed by “Pirates” (113) and Five Short Stories (110).
  • Hard Mode: A lot of readers don’t bother marking their books HM even if they are, but from what I can tell, the squares with the most Hard Mode completions were “Five Short Stories” (71%), “ “Impossible Places” (67%), “Cozy SFF” (66%), and “Parent Protagonist” (65%), and the least completed was Not A Book (20%) and Book Club/Readalong (27%).
  • Themes: 476 cards were themed, with 263 using some flavor of hard mode (59 did HM plus at least one other constraint). Others liked to focus on their owned books, or LGBTQ+ authors, or BIPOC authors, or MG books only, or sequels, or romances, or book club books. Six people amusingly said their theme was NO hard mode books, "easy/normal mode" only. Lots of peoples had really unique theme ideas, so I don’t want to play favorites; I did think the “'books by authors born in 25 different countries (not US/UK/Canada/New Zealand/Australia" and “Foodie Gourmet” were intriguing ones. Shoutout to the Monsterfucker card.
  • Favorite Book to Read for Bingo: Out of 1438 cards, 55 said that Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption was their favorite to read for Bingo, with The Tainted Cup at 54, The Raven Scholar at 34, and The Sign of the Dragon at 28.

Past Links (* indicate official posts):

Current Year Links:

  • Send us links of analyses and we'll post them!
u/FarragutCircle — 19 days ago