Sixteen is 'o culo, the backside, and the Italian reference table does something it rarely bothers with: it prints a second column explaining what the figure means. Against 16 it says la fortuna. Luck.
That is not the compiler being coy. Avere culo is ordinary Italian for being lucky, in the way English says jammy, and the smorfia is quoting the idiom rather than the anatomy.
- 16
- 'O culo
- the backside
- Row 11–20 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
The pairing rests on the idiom rather than on any story, which makes 16 one of the few squares whose sense is actually documented: the lists gloss it fortuna outright.
Other things filed on 16
In Neapolitan life
Sicily keeps the same joke and moves it. The Trapani board puts u culu at 23 and adds a note of its own: whoever has luck marks that number on the card. Two dialects, one euphemism, different squares.
16 in the smorfia — frequently asked
The figure is the backside and the published gloss is fortuna, luck. It is one of the very few squares where the lists spell out the metaphor.
No number is. The smorfia assigns a picture to each square; it makes no claim about which numbers come out of the wheel, and neither does this site.