Four is the awkward number
Two choices have a coin. Six have an ordinary die. Four has almost nothing. Tabletop sets include a d4, but it is the pyramid nobody enjoys reading, and most homes do not own one. Cutting a deck works only if everyone agrees on suit order first, and writing four slips of paper takes longer than the decision is worth.
So people improvise, and the improvisations leak. Rolling a d6 and starting over on 5 and 6 is genuinely fair, but only while everyone still bothers to start over, which lasts about three rolls. Counting around the table from whoever spoke last is not random at all. This page removes the improvisation: one press, one digit, nothing to remember.
Why 1 to 4 is the cleanest draw on the site
Under the button is crypto.getRandomValues(), the browser's cryptographic entropy source, wrapped in rejection sampling so no value ends up with a fractionally fatter slice than its neighbors. Four is a special case: it takes exactly two bits, and two bits produce exactly four outcomes, so nothing ever has to be discarded and drawn again. Ranges like 1 to 5 or 1 to 100 do throw draws away behind the scenes. This one never does.
The practical effect is boring, which is the point — 25% per value, press after press, with no drift over a long session. What is not boring is how often repeats surface. With only four buckets, back-to-back matches land on roughly one press in four, and runs of three identical digits turn up often enough in honest sequences that people write in about them. The generator has no memory; the last result has no bearing on the next. The methodology page shows the arithmetic in full.
What a four-way draw is actually for
Turn order for four players. Board games, card games, a four-bracket tournament, who tees off first. Number the seats before pressing and the order stops being a negotiation.
Splitting a room into quarters. Four classroom stations, four workshop breakouts, four relay teams. Press once per person and send them to the matching station, or hand the full name list to the team generator and let it perform the whole split in a single pass.
Choosing among four real options. Four restaurants, four weekend plans, four shortlisted names. Write the list, number it top to bottom, press, and treat the answer as binding. Agreeing to be bound beforehand is the part that makes it feel fair afterward.
Set Count to 4 and clear Allow repeats and the page deals all four values in shuffled order instead of one pick — a complete running order in a single press. Adjacent spans have their own pages: 1 to 3 when someone drops out, 1 to 5 when someone joins, and 1 to 10 for a wider spread. For a range you type yourself, including negative numbers, use the random number generator.
All randomization on Spinness uses crypto.getRandomValues() — the browser's cryptographic random source. Learn how our randomness works.
Frequently asked questions
How is this better than rolling a die and ignoring 5 and 6?
The reroll method is perfectly fair on paper, provided every 5 and 6 really is rerolled. In practice patience runs out and someone accepts a 5 as close enough to 1, which quietly weights the outcome. This page cannot produce an out-of-range value, so there is nothing to reroll and nothing to fudge.
Are all four numbers equally likely?
Yes, 25% each. A range of four maps onto exactly two bits of entropy, so every value gets an identical share with no rounding remainder left over. A short session can still look lopsided, which is ordinary variance in a small sample rather than a weighted draw.
Can I pick a random card suit with this?
Yes. Map clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades onto 1 through 4 before you press. Fixing the mapping first is what keeps it honest; deciding what the digit means after seeing it defeats the purpose.
Can I get all four numbers in a random order with no duplicates?
Yes. Set Count to 4 and uncheck Allow repeats. The page then shuffles the values 1 to 4 and returns the whole sequence, which is what you want for turn order. Leave Allow repeats checked and each of the four draws is independent, so duplicates will appear.
Does anything leave my device?
No. The draw is computed by your own browser. Spinness runs no backend for these tools, so no result, timestamp or identifier is transmitted, logged or stored anywhere.