WheelJarTeams & Lists
Paste the names once, then split them into teams, shuffle them into an order, or pair them up for gifts.
Random pair generator
Picking partners in front of the room is the oldest cruelty in the timetable.
Random task assigner
The rota argument is never about the bins. It is about who decided.
Round robin generator
Writing a fixture list by hand always ends with one team playing twice on the same night.
List randomizer
One shuffle, every ordering equally likely. Which is more than your music app manages.
Random team generator
Twelve names, two teams, no captains. The worst part of five-a-side, solved.
Secret Santa generator
Everybody gives once, receives once, and nobody buys a present for themselves.
Everything here starts with the same awkward moment: a group of people, and a division that somebody has to make. These three tools take the decision off whoever would otherwise have to defend it.
The team generator splits a list into as many sides as you ask for, dealing round-robin from a shuffled order so nobody is picked last and no team ends up short-handed. The list randomizer shuffles the same names into a running order — presentation slots, interview sequence, who does the washing up on which night — using the shuffle that makes every ordering equally likely rather than one that merely looks mixed. The Secret Santa generator pairs everyone into a single gift-giving circle where self-matches cannot occur.
One habit makes all three defensible: generate once, in front of the people it affects, and accept the result. Rerolling until the split looks right is a choice dressed up as a draw, and the room can always tell. If a result genuinely needs adjusting, say so out loud and let the group agree the swap — that is a negotiation, which is fine, as long as nobody pretends it was chance.
Frequently asked questions
Which tool do I need — teams, order or pairs?
Teams if the group has to be divided into sides that play or work together. Order if everyone stays together but the sequence matters, as with presentations or a chore rota. Pairs if each person needs exactly one other person assigned to them, which is the Secret Santa case. All three start from the same pasted list of names.
Why do all three use the same shuffle?
Because Fisher–Yates is the only common shuffle that provably makes every ordering equally likely, and all three jobs are ordering problems underneath. Teams deal a shuffled list round-robin, the randomizer shows the shuffled list directly, and Secret Santa reads it as a closed chain. One correct algorithm, three presentations.
Will the teams be evenly sized?
Always, to within one person. The team generator deals names one per team in rotation rather than slicing the list into blocks, so thirteen people across four teams gives 4, 3, 3 and 3 — never 6, 3, 3 and 1. Which team gets the extra person is itself random, since the deal follows the shuffle.
Can anyone draw their own name in Secret Santa?
No. The Secret Santa generator builds a single closed chain — each person gives to the next in a shuffled circle — so self-matches are impossible by construction rather than filtered out afterwards. A naive random pairing avoids self-matches only about 36.8% of the time, which is why paper draws get redrawn so often.
How the randomness works
crypto.getRandomValues with rejection sampling. That makes every one of the n! possible orderings
equally likely. Teams are then dealt round-robin from the shuffled list, so sizes differ by at most
one; Secret Santa reads the shuffled list as a single cycle, which rules out self-matches without
any retry; the list randomizer simply returns the shuffled order. Lists are mirrored into the page
URL for sharing and never sent to a server.Sources: