Yes or No Wheel

How to use it

1. Type your questionWrite it in the question field, for example "Should we order pizza tonight?". It appears under the answer, so everyone in the room knows what was asked.
2. Pick how to answerLeave it on one spin, or choose best of 3 or best of 5. Add Maybe as a third line, or write Yes *2 to tilt the odds.
3. Spin and live with itClick the wheel, press SPIN, or hit Space. The answer lands with your question beneath it. In a series, keep spinning until one side has a majority.

What the yes or no wheel does

• Gives you a yes or no spinner with your question shown beside the answer.
• Answers by one spin, best of 3 or best of 5; a series stops as soon as one side has a majority.
• Takes Maybe as a third slice, or tilted odds such as Yes *2.
• Lets you spin the wheel: yes or no, on a projector with Present or with the Space bar.
• Puts this yes or no wheel spinner on another web page with Embed, as a single iframe.

Why a question field matters

A wheel that only says "No" is easy to misread. Was that about the movie, the second helping, or the email you are dreading? The question field fixes that. Whatever you type is shown beneath the answer, in place of the chance line, and in a series it is repeated on the final result, so a screenshot or a shared screen still makes sense an hour later.

Keep the question closed and specific. "Should I go to the gym today?" works. "What should I do with my life?" does not, because the answer set is not yes or no. If your real question has several possible answers, the decision wheel is the better fit: it takes any number of options and lets you weight them.

The field holds up to 140 characters, which is enough for one clear sentence. Write the question before you spin, not after. If you are playing with kids, let them type it, since choosing the wording is half the fun. People who phrase the question afterwards tend to phrase it so the answer they got sounds right.

One spin, best of 3, or best of 5

The Answer by setting under Options controls how much the wheel gets to say. One spin gives you the answer immediately. Best of 3 keeps a running count (for example "1 yes, 1 no so far") and stops as soon as one side reaches two. Best of 5 stops at three. Between spins the result line tells you the score, and the final answer is marked as final. The running count lives only on the page, so reloading it, or changing Answer by, starts a new series.

A longer series does not change the fairness of any single spin. With an even Yes/No wheel every spin is 50/50, and the series simply reaches the same 50/50 by a longer road. What it changes is how it feels: a single spin can seem arbitrary, while a series gives you something closer to a vote, and people accept a three-spin result more readily than a one-spin result they did not like.

One detail to know: in a series, any entry that does not start with the letter Y counts as a no. That includes Maybe. If you have added a third line, expect Maybe to push the tally toward No, and think of the series as yes versus everything else.

Adding Maybe and changing the odds

The wheel starts as two equal halves, Yes and No. The entry list is ordinary text, so you can edit it. Add a line that says Maybe and the wheel becomes three equal slices, each at one in three. That is useful when you want an honest "not sure", but for one-spin answers only. For a series, stay with two entries.

To tilt the odds, add a star and a number after an entry: Yes *2 makes yes twice as likely as No. With the question field empty, the result shows the chance of the answer on that spin; once a question is typed, the question takes that line, so keep the tilt visible in the entry list. The table below shows what a tilt does to a series, and the figures are plain probability: a best of 3 is won by the side that takes two of three spins.

Tilting is for honest cases, like a family rule that says "we only skip practice if the wheel is kind", or a game where the odds are part of the fun. It is not a way to dress up a decision you have already made. The slice sizes show the tilt to everyone watching, which is the point. If you are unsure whether a tilt is fair to everyone, leave the slices equal.

When a coin-flip decision helps

People often spend a lot of effort on choices where the options are nearly equal. If two restaurants, two weekend plans or two shirts are close, the cost of deliberating is bigger than the cost of picking the "wrong" one. A random answer ends the loop, and you get your time back.

A useful side effect is the gut check. When the wheel lands, notice your first reaction. If you feel relief, the answer fits. If you feel a small pang of disappointment, that tells you what you wanted all along, and you are free to ignore the wheel and take it. This is a common trick with coin flips, and the spinner works the same way: it is a mirror as much as a judge.

It helps most for small, reversible, low-stakes choices: who goes first, whether to walk or take the bus, whether to try the new cafe. It also helps to break a standoff in a group, where the loudest voice would otherwise win. Everyone agrees in advance that the spin settles it, and nobody has to feel overruled by a person. For a pure fifty-fifty with a running tally, use the coin flip.

When it does not help

Skip the wheel for decisions that affect your health, money, safety, legal position or other people who have not agreed to a random answer. Those deserve real information and, where needed, a qualified professional. A spinner is a way to cut through indecision, not a substitute for judgment.

It also fails when the options are not close. If you already know that one answer would be a mistake, a 50% chance of landing on it is not a fair deal. In that case, remove the option instead of spinning, or use the decision wheel to rank what is left.

Finally, agree on the rules before the spin. Decide whether you are doing one spin or a series, whether a re-spin is allowed, and whether the answer is binding. Rules made after a disappointing result are not rules. A short agreement up front, such as "best of 3, no re-spins", keeps the fun in the game.

Also watch for the urge to keep spinning until you like the answer. If you notice yourself wanting a different result, that is already your answer. Stop, take the option you were hoping for, and treat the spin as having done its job. For a choice between several options, a decision wheel with weights fits better.

Fair spins, shown odds, and a note on privacy

Each answer is picked with the browser's cryptographic random number generator before the animation starts, and the wheel then stops inside the slice that was already chosen. The slice sizes show the odds, and the result line spells out the chance whenever the question field is empty. If you want to check the picking code yourself, the page on whether spin the wheel is random runs a live test of thousands of spins.

Typed questions are kept with the wheel on this device, and Copy link adds the question to the address after the # sign. Servers never see that part, but whoever you send the link to can read it, so keep sensitive questions off shared links. The method is tested in the open on is spin the wheel random.