Random Letter Generator

How the random letter generator works

Each letter is one equal slice of the wheel. With all 26 letters, every letter has a 1 in 26 chance — about 3.8% — on each spin. Choose a preset (vowels, consonants, or A–Z without the hardest letters), or edit the list to make your own.

Wheelova uses your browser's crypto.getRandomValues(). According to MDN, browsers implement it as a cryptographically secure pseudo-random generator seeded with system entropy — the same kind of source used for security features. It is unpredictable in practice, but it is not a physical "true random" device such as atmospheric-noise generators.

Fair for games, different from real English

On this wheel every letter is equally likely. In real English text, letters are very uneven. In Peter Norvig's count of about 744 billion words from Google Books, E makes up about 12.5% of all letters and Z under 0.1%:

First letters of words are different again — the same source notes that T is the most common first letter and that E starts words far less often than it appears overall. That's why letters like Q, X and Z make word games much harder: very few common words start with them.

Which preset should I use?

For an even gentler game, also remove J, K, V and Y by deleting them from the list.

Word games to play with a random letter

Categories (Scattergories-style). Spin a letter. Everyone writes an animal, a country, a food, a name and a job starting with it in 60 seconds. Unique answers score a point.

One-minute word sprint. Spin a letter and list as many words as you can that start with it. Longer words score extra.

Story chain. Each sentence of a group story must start with the spun letter. Spin again for every new sentence.

Alphabet scavenger hunt. Find an object in the room — or in a picture book — that starts with the letter.

Name game. Spin a letter and use the Random Name Generator for inspiration, or invent a character whose first and last names start with it.

For teachers: phonics and spelling

• Letter-sound warm-up — spin, say the letter name and its sound, then a word that starts with it.
• Spelling practice — spin a letter and ask for a spelling-list word containing it.
• No repeats across a lesson — turn on Remove winner so you work through the alphabet without repeating letters.
• Projector-friendly — the wheel fills the screen width on a classroom display.

Other alphabets and characters

The wheel accepts any characters, one per line. You can make a wheel for another alphabet, a set of musical notes (A–G), Greek letters for maths, or digits and letters for a puzzle code.