The term “Kelly’s Eye” is derived from the old-fashioned game of bingo, where it was commonly called the “Kelly Board.” In a typical bingo game, each player has a card with a number on it (1-36), and the object is to fill in all of the squares on your card with numbers.
If you have the number “5” in a particular square, for example, you would cross that square off your card and put an “X” in the corresponding spot on your neighbor’s card. The first player to finish their card wins the game.
During the early days of bingo, players would often nicknames their boards in order to make them more easily identifiable. One such board was called the “Kelly Board” because it belonged to one Mr.
Kelly. Over time, however, other names were adopted for this particular board, and so it became known simply as “Kelly’s Eye.”.
