Spinning Wheels for Decisions: From Game Shows to Your Phone

A spinning wheel is one of the simplest ways to hand a choice to chance: mark out some slices, give it a push and wait for it to stop. The idea of a wheel that decides things is much older than game shows or apps. Here is how it went from a medieval picture of fate to the name picker on a classroom whiteboard, with sources for each step.

Fortune's wheel: an idea before it was a game

The image of a turning wheel that lifts some people up and drops others goes back at least to late Roman times. The philosopher Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in prison before his execution in about 524. In one passage Fortune herself explains how she works: "I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend." (H. R. James translation.) Boethius only mentions the wheel briefly, but the image stuck.

Medieval artists turned the metaphor into a picture. Manuscripts and church windows show small figures clinging to a great wheel, often labelled in Latin: regnabo (I shall reign), regno (I reign), regnavi (I have reigned) and sum sine regno (I am without a kingdom). The same wheel appears in the Carmina Burana poems and later became the Wheel of Fortune card in tarot decks. None of these wheels were spun to make a choice. They were a way of saying that luck always turns.

From symbol to game of chance

Wheels that people actually spin for a result are more recent. Roulette, whose name is French for "little wheel", was devised in 18th-century France, and the single-zero wheel was introduced by François and Louis Blanc at Bad Homburg in 1843. You will often read that the mathematician Blaise Pascal invented it in the 17th century while trying to build a perpetual motion machine. Sources disagree on this: some histories repeat it, while Encyclopaedia Britannica lists the Pascal story among the legends about the game's origin. The safest statement is that roulette as we know it is a French game of the 1700s.

Fairgrounds and casinos have the upright version, the Big Six wheel, sometimes also called a wheel of fortune. It is a large vertical wheel ringed with pins. A pointer on a flexible strip of rubber or leather ticks against the pins, slows the wheel and marks the winning slot. It is a betting game with a large built-in house edge, which is a good reminder that a wheel is only as fair as the person who designed its slices.

Spinners instead of dice

Board games show another reason people liked wheels and tops. When Milton Bradley published The Checkered Game of Life in 1860, many Americans saw dice as a tool of gambling. So the game used a teetotum, a numbered top that players spun, instead. Board game historian Tristan Donovan points out that later versions of the game kept the no-dice tradition, and today's Game of Life is played with a spinner. Spinners became common in children's games for practical reasons too: they are easy to read, hard to lose under the sofa and do not roll off the table.

One top game still widely played today is the dreidel, a four-sided top whose letters Nun, Gimel, Hei and Shin tell the spinner what to take from or add to the pot.

The wheel on television

Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC on January 6, 1975. Its creator, Merv Griffin, combined the word game Hangman with a big spinning wheel that sets how much each correctly guessed letter is worth. Pat Sajak and Vanna White joined in 1981 and 1982, and the show became one of the longest-running game shows on American television. For millions of viewers, the clicking prize wheel became the picture that comes to mind whenever someone says "spin the wheel".

How people use decision wheels today

Online wheels kept the look and the suspense of a real wheel but dropped the physics. Common uses include:

• Teachers picking which student answers next, or which group presents first.
• Friends deciding where to eat, what to watch or which game to play.
• Drawing a winner for a small giveaway among people who all agreed to the rules.
• Sharing out chores, turns or seats on a road trip.
• Settling a plain yes or no when you are stuck between two equally good options.

A few habits make a decision wheel work better. Agree on the rules before the first spin, including whether the first result is final or it is best of three. Only put options on the wheel that you would genuinely accept, because a wheel cannot tell a good option from a bad one. If one option should be more likely, add it twice instead of arguing about it afterwards. In a group, let someone who does not care about the result press the button, so nobody can claim the spin was unfair.

To build your own, type each option on its own line in our picker wheel and press spin. For a two-way choice, the yes or no wheel splits the wheel into equal YES and NO slices. If you need inspiration, our list of picker wheel ideas has ready-made options, and how to make a decision when you can't decide covers what to do if the wheel's answer feels wrong. That feeling is useful information: if you are disappointed by the result, you probably wanted the other option all along.

Is a spinning wheel fair?

A physical wheel is only as fair as its construction. Slices of different sizes, a heavy spot on the rim or a sticky axle can make some results more likely than others, and a carnival operator chooses how many slices each prize gets. That is why a homemade cardboard wheel is fine for choosing a film but not for anything that matters.

A digital wheel works the other way round. It picks the result with a random number first and then animates the spin to land on it. Our picker wheel uses your browser's cryptographic random number generator, so every option has the same chance on every spin, and earlier spins have no effect on the next one.

Fun facts

• Boethius gives Fortune's wheel only a few lines, yet it became one of the most common images in medieval art.
• The Latin labels on medieval wheels describe a full cycle: hoping to rule, ruling, having ruled and losing everything.
• Milton Bradley's first hit avoided dice on moral grounds, which is why spinners became a fixture of family board games.
• Wheel of Fortune was conceived as a mix of Hangman and a game of chance, not as a pure quiz show.
• Adding a "spin again" slice to your own wheel is an easy way to build in a second chance.

Sources

• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by H. R. James (Project Gutenberg), Book II.
• Wikipedia, Wheel of Fortune (medieval).
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Roulette; Wikipedia, Roulette.
• Wikipedia, Big Six wheel.
• The Boston Globe (2017), How Milton Bradley's morality play shaped the modern board game.
• HISTORY.com, Wheel of Fortune premieres on NBC.

FAQ

Who invented the spinning wheel for making decisions?

No single person. The wheel as a symbol of fate goes back to Boethius in the 6th century, roulette appeared in 18th-century France, and board games used spinning tops from at least 1860. Online picker wheels are the latest version of the idea.

When did Wheel of Fortune first air?

The TV game show Wheel of Fortune, created by Merv Griffin, premiered on NBC on January 6, 1975.

Did Blaise Pascal invent roulette?

Probably not. The story is often repeated, but Encyclopaedia Britannica treats it as a legend. The game as we know it was devised in 18th-century France.

Is an online picker wheel really random?

A well-built one is. Our picker wheel chooses the winner with your browser's cryptographic random number generator, so every option has an equal chance on every spin.