Spin the Name 한국어

How the wheel works

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How the result is chosen

The result is settled before the wheel starts to turn, and the spin you watch only shows that result. The value that decides it is one of the secure random numbers made by your browser. To turn that value into an item number, the possible values are shared out so that every number gets the same count, and a value from the leftover part is thrown away and drawn again, which keeps any number from coming up more often than the rest. Where the wheel stops inside the result slice is also chosen with these secure random numbers, away from the edges of the slice, so the pointer never comes to rest pointing at the line between two slices.

The chance of each item

All slices are the same size, and every item on the wheel has the same chance of being picked (for example, 1 in 6 each when there are 6 items). A name written on two lines takes two slices, so it is twice as likely to come up as a name written once. How many turns the wheel makes, where inside a slice it stops and where the previous spin stopped have no effect on which item is picked.

Spinning and the result window

The wheel starts fast and slows down little by little, stopping after 4.5 seconds with the pointer on its right-hand edge aimed inside the result slice. The picked slice then stays bright while the others are darkened, and a white outline appears around it. A moment later, a result window opens with the picked name and these buttons.

Getting the result sooner

To skip the rest of a spin, press Esc, or press the wheel again once 0.5 seconds have passed since it started. The spin ends at once, but the result is still the one chosen at the start. If Reduce motion is on, a press on the wheel does not set it turning; the result slice moves straight to where the pointer aims. Its starting value follows your device’s reduce-motion setting, and a choice made with the button is saved. Switching Reduce motion on mid-spin, whether with the button on the page or in your device settings, also ends the spin at once and shows the result. Reduce motion does not change how the result is chosen.

Sound

Sound starts off; switched on, it plays a short tick as the pointer passes into the next slice and a two-note chime when the wheel stops, except when the spin ended because the page was hidden, for example after a switch to another tab.

Adding items

Names or other choices go into the Items (one per line) box, one per line, and up to 200 of them fit on the wheel. The number of items on the wheel is shown together with the limit, for example 6 / 200. Blank lines and lines without any visible character are skipped, so they cannot be picked. Spaces at the start and end of a line are removed and runs of spaces inside it become one, so “ Avery ” and “Avery” end up as the same name. Lines beyond the first 200 items stay in the box and are saved with it, but the wheel leaves them out and shows a notice, and removing an earlier item lets the next line move up onto the wheel.

An item can be up to 80 characters; a longer line is cut to 80 rather than dropped, with a notice. The 80 characters are counted as you see them on screen, so an emoji made of several joined emoji, such as a family emoji, counts as one character and is not split when an item is cut (a browser without this way of counting may count and cut differently). The shortened version is what appears on the wheel, in the result and in share links, and your text in the box stays as you typed it. Items with many emoji or letters with added marks may be cut before they reach 80 characters.

Long names that do not fit in their slice end in “…” on the wheel, but the item box, the history and the remove button in the result window show the full name. The large name in the result window shows up to three lines. When there are very many items, the slices get too narrow for names, so the wheel shows coloured slices only, and a note says the list is in the item box. White lines run between the slices, so the wheel does not rely on colour differences alone to separate them.

Saving and sharing

What stays in this browser

The text in the item box is saved inside this browser and saved again automatically after edits. When you edit a shared list so that it takes the place of your own saved list, your list from just before is saved as one previous list, kept in the same saved item as the list. The presentation order and lunch menu pages do not share the home page list: each saves a list of its own. On each of these pages, the English and Korean versions share one list. The previous list works the same way: each page has its own, and the English and Korean versions of a page share it. The Sound and Reduce motion settings are saved the moment you press their buttons, and the spin history order (Newest first or Order drawn) is saved the moment you change it; unlike the lists, all three are shared by the whole site. A reload keeps the list, the Sound and Reduce motion settings and the spin history order, but spin history and results are not saved, so they are gone. After a reload, the previous list is still there. If the browser blocks storage or its storage is full, the wheel still works, and a note tells you, just once, when the list could not be saved. A browser may also clear what it has stored on its own after a while, possibly in a way its user has configured. Keep a separate copy of any list you cannot afford to lose.

To share a list, press Copy share link. The items now on the wheel are packed into the link address itself, so anyone who opens the link sees that list. Leave out anything others should not see. If a link runs past 2,000 characters, you also see a warning that some apps may cut long links. The link is built on the address of the page you are on, so a link made on the lunch menu page opens the lunch menu page. Before copying, your browser unpacks the new link itself, and if the items do not all come back unchanged, nothing is copied and a notice says the list is too large to fit in a share link. The same notice can also appear in a browser that cannot unpack compressed links, even when the list is not large. Opening a link leaves the visitor’s own saved list untouched, and if they have one, Show my saved list brings it back. Editing a shared list in the item box, though, saves it in place of the list saved there before. The list saved there before is not deleted: it stays as one previous list, and the Restore my previous list button brings it back. Pressing that button swaps the two lists, so the list just edited becomes the previous list and the same button changes to Back to the list I just edited; every press swaps them again. A previous list is created only on the first save after a shared list is edited, and not at all if no list was saved before or if the edited text is exactly the saved text. Later edits, once the list is your own, leave the previous list as it is. Only one previous list is kept: editing another shared list makes the previous list the list saved at that moment, and the earlier one is kept nowhere. Removing items from a shared list with the remove button in the result window, on the other hand, is not saved, so the saved list stays as it was. If a link is broken or cannot be opened, a notice appears and the visitor’s own saved list (or the sample list) is shown instead.

For example, say your saved list is Avery, Blake and Casey. If you open the same list through a share link and press Remove “Avery” and spin again in the result window after Avery comes up, the saved list is still Avery, Blake and Casey. On your own list, opened as usual without a share link, the same button pressed after Avery comes up takes Avery off the list and saves it that way, so the next time you open the page, only Blake and Casey are left.

Here are four typical cases side by side.

What the site itself sends

No feature of the site itself sends your list anywhere else. It has no feature that uses cookies either. The clipboard is used only to put the link on it when you press Copy share link, and nothing on your clipboard is read. When someone opens a share link, the list inside it is not sent to the site. This is about the site itself only; the Privacy Policy covers personal information as a whole.

Keyboard and screen readers

From the keyboard, once you have moved to the wheel with Tab, Enter or Space spins it, and a border marks what is selected. Pressing Tab for the first time shows a Skip to content link, and pressing that link takes you straight to the main content. As soon as the result window opens, its Spin again button is selected, and Esc closes the window. The name is shown as text in the window, but no testing with real screen readers has been done yet.

What you need

JavaScript must be on for the wheel to spin; without it, a message asks you to turn it on. The Sound and Full screen buttons appear only in browsers that support those features. Light or dark appearance follows your device setting, and the page has no switch of its own for it. Share links normally hold the list in compressed form, so a browser that cannot unpack it will not open the link.