Skip to the contentSpinRondo

Scattergories letter generator

Six letters on the rim, one spin, and the round has its letter. Elimination mode is on, so a letter leaves the wheel once it has been played and the S that opened the evening cannot open the third round as well. Every letter still on the rim has the same chance.

This wheel is already set up for the job. Open it in the editor to change the list, the machine or the odds.

Every spin draws from your browser’s cryptographic random source. How a draw is made sets out the method and its limits.

Open this wheel in the editor

Which letters make a round playable, and which kill it?

The Scattergories die is twenty-sided, and the six letters it leaves off the alphabet are Q, U, V, X, Y and Z. That is a count rather than squeamishness: ask a table for a country, a body part and something in a kitchen beginning with V and you get one answer, three arguments and a round nobody enjoyed.

Everything past those six depends on your own category list. J and Z are fine for animals and hopeless for rivers; K is generous in German and thin in Spanish. The rule that works is to read down your categories before you play, drop the letters that fail two or more of them, and put only the survivors on the wheel — then an unplayable round is impossible rather than unlucky.

Why draw the letter in front of the players?

Because “you stopped on K on purpose” is a real accusation, and the traditional method invites it. Somebody recites the alphabet under their breath while somebody else shouts stop, which puts a person in the middle of the draw — and that person wins the round noticeably often.

A wheel takes the timing away from everyone. It is spun once, on the table, in front of the players, and the letter was fixed before the animation started rather than chosen as the wheel slowed down. Nobody has to be trusted, which is a better position for whoever happens to be holding the phone.

How do you stop the same letter coming up all evening?

Elimination mode. Each letter leaves the wheel as it is drawn, so six letters give six different rounds and nothing repeats while the rim still has something on it. It is the game’s oldest complaint and it is a one-switch fix.

When the wheel empties it says so and stops, which is the end of a set rather than an error. Start a new session to put every letter back, or add more before you run out. Tables that play long evenings usually load ten or twelve and treat an empty rim as the signal to take a break.

What else is this wheel good for?

It is the letter wheel with a shortlist on it instead of the whole alphabet, so taking a letter out works here the way it works there. Where the round needs a word rather than a letter, the name wheel holds the list you wrote.

Swap the letters for things to act out and the same rim runs charades. Swap them for pictures and a child who cannot read the letters yet can still take a turn on the animal wheel.

Questions about drawing letters

They are not on it unless you put them there. The wheel starts with six letters and the list edits like any other — delete one, type another, paste a set of twenty. The official Scattergories die leaves six letters off the alphabet, Q, U, V, X, Y and Z, and your own categories may justify dropping more. The wheel has no opinion about which letters are fair; it draws from what is on the rim, so the shortlist is the rule.

Not here, and that is deliberate. A wheel draws the letter; the round is closed by the sand timer in the box, a kitchen timer, or the first player to finish and call stop. The spin length in the settings is only how long the machine turns before it shows the letter — three seconds or ten, it changes nothing about the draw, and treating it as a round timer would make the wheel referee something it cannot see.

Yes, and the three games disagree about letters, which is exactly why the list is yours. Scattergories drops six on its die. Stadt-Land-Fluss has no printed rule at all — most tables agree to leave out Q, X and Y first, because German has no country beginning with any of them. Basta is usually played with the whole alphabet minus Ñ. Put your table’s version on the rim and the argument is settled before the first round.

Save the wheel and it opens with the same letters next time. Signed out it stays in this browser; with an account it follows you to another device, and a share link hands the same set to whoever hosts next week. What a saved wheel does not keep is which letters you already used — that lives in the session log until the tab closes, so a new evening always starts with a full rim.