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The Letter Picker Wheel is a random letter generator shaped like a spinning wheel. It holds all 26 letters of the English alphabet, and one spin picks a letter at random. You can narrow it to vowels or consonants, switch to lowercase, or leave out letters that make a game too hard.
It is free, needs no sign-up and works on phones, tablets and classroom screens, which makes it a handy companion for word games, phonics lessons and creative prompts.
What is a letter picker wheel?
A letter picker wheel is a spinner with one letter on each slice. Spin it and the letter under the pointer is your random letter.
It does the same job as a random letter generator or a letter die, but the whole alphabet is visible and the pick happens in front of everyone. That makes it easy to trust in a game and fun to watch in a classroom.
How to use the Letter Picker Wheel
Three settings at the top of the Entries tab shape the wheel, then you spin.
Letters
- A to Z: all 26 letters.
- Vowels only: A, E, I, O and U.
- Consonants only: the other 21 letters, including Y.
Case
Choose UPPERCASE or lowercase. Lowercase is useful for early readers, who often learn letter shapes in lowercase first.
Leave out
Type any letters you want removed, for example Q X Z, and they disappear from the wheel as soon as you press Enter or click away.
Spin
Click the wheel, press SPIN or use Ctrl + Enter. The result window shows the letter with Spin again, Remove from wheel and Copy buttons.
Is every letter equally likely?
Yes. Every letter on the wheel has exactly the same chance, unless you deliberately turn on weights.
- Full alphabet: each letter has a 1 in 26 chance, about 3.8%.
- Vowels only: each vowel has a 1 in 5 chance, 20%.
- Consonants only: each has a 1 in 21 chance, about 4.8%.
- Leaving out Q, X and Z: each of the remaining 23 letters has a 1 in 23 chance.
The letter is drawn with the browser's cryptographic random number generator before the wheel turns. Note that this is different from how often letters appear in English words: E is far more common in text, but on the wheel it is no more likely than J.
Going through the alphabet without repeats
Turn on Elimination mode in Settings and each letter is removed after it is picked. Keep spinning and you work through the whole alphabet in a random order, with no letter coming up twice.
That suits alphabet challenges, a letter-of-the-day routine, or a game that lasts several rounds where every round needs a new letter. The Results tab records the order, and changing any option or pressing Reset brings all the letters back.
Letter games and activities
Most uses fall into word games, learning and creative prompts.
Word games
- Scattergories and Categories: spin a letter for each round; many players leave out Q, X and Z.
- Stop the Bus or Name Place Animal Thing: everyone fills in a category with the letter.
- Alphabet chain games: name a food, country or film starting with the letter.
Classroom and phonics
- Letter recognition: spin, say the letter and its sound.
- Vowel practice: use Vowels only for short and long vowel sound drills.
- Spelling warm-ups: write three words that start with the letter.
Creative prompts
- Baby or pet names, character names and band names starting with the letter.
- Drawing challenges, alliteration poems and tongue twisters.
Letter wheel vs letter dice and paper tiles
A spinning letter wheel is easier to adjust than physical letter dice or tiles.
- Remove hard letters in a second instead of rerolling or hunting for tiles.
- Choose vowels or consonants only, which a standard die cannot do.
- Elimination mode guarantees no repeats across a game.
- Everyone in a room or video call can see the same result in full screen.
Custom letter sets
The letters also appear in the entries box, one per line, and you can edit them directly. Add accented letters such as É or Ñ, or letters from another alphabet, and they become slices on the wheel. You can even add a blend like CH or SH for phonics practice.
Changing the Letters, Case or Leave out settings rebuilds the list from scratch, so make those choices first and then add your own extras. Press Save wheel to keep a custom set under My saved wheels.
Sharing and privacy
The share icon copies a link that opens this exact letter wheel, including the letters you left out. The embed icon gives you code to add it to a class website, blog or LMS, and the full screen icon hides the panel for presenting.
Nothing is uploaded. Your settings and results are stored only in your browser on your device.