Marble race picker

Setting up a marble race

Start with the box on the right of the course. Every line you type becomes one marble, so a list of six dinners gives you six marbles and a list of the whole office gives you as many marbles as there are people, up to twenty-four. Blank lines are ignored, and a line that appears twice simply enters two marbles with the same name, which is a handy way to give a favourite a double chance on purpose.

If you have nothing in mind, the Fill with food ideas button drops in a handful of dishes so you can watch a race straight away. Clear empties the box when you want to start over, and Copy link builds an address that carries your list, so a friend who opens it sees exactly the same marbles waiting at the top.

What you see during the drop

When you press Start race the camera pulls back to show the whole course and the marbles fall together. Each one carries its name above it, so you can follow your own choice through the pegs without squinting. A running order sits in the corner and re-sorts itself as marbles overtake each other, which means you always know who is currently ahead.

Most races are decided late. A marble that leads through the pegs can be caught in a funnel or slowed by a sliding platform, and the order often changes in the last stretch. That is by design: a course where the early leader always wins would be dull to watch and would not feel like a fair draw.

Winner or loser: choosing what the result means

The Who wins setting decides which end of the finish order counts. With first across the line selected, the marble that crosses first is your pick. Switch to last across the line and the same race produces a loser instead, which suits jobs nobody wants, such as who clears the table or who makes the next round of drinks.

The full running order stays on screen after the race ends, so you can also read it as a ranking. Some groups use the whole order to assign several tasks at once: first gets the best seat, second the next, and so on down to the one who gets the chore.

Racing again without repeating yourself

Two buttons appear when the race is over. Race again runs the same list a second time from a fresh shuffle. Take it out and race again removes the winner from the list and starts a new race with everyone else, which is the quickest way to build a complete order one place at a time. Keep pressing it and you will end up with a final ranking of the whole list, each place decided by its own race.

Running it with a group

A marble race works well on a shared screen because everyone can watch and nobody has to trust one person to pick. Put the list up before anyone knows which line is theirs, agree on whether first or last wins, and only then press start. Agreeing on the rule before the result is what makes the outcome feel settled rather than argued over.

It also helps with small stakes in a family. Children tend to accept a result they watched happen far more readily than one announced by a parent, and the sound effects and name tags keep the wait entertaining. If the room is quiet, use the Sound effects checkbox to turn the audio off.

What the marble race does not do

It does not weigh your choices. Every line has the same chance whether it is a favourite meal or an afterthought, so if you would be unhappy with one of the options, take it off the list before you start. It will not learn from past races, it does not rank things by quality, and it is not a substitute for a decision that deserves real thought. For anything with serious consequences, treat the result as a tie-breaker at most.

The race also does not send your list anywhere. The choices stay in this browser, and clearing your site data removes them.

Questions people ask

Can I use it for names instead of food? Yes. The tool does not know what the lines mean, so names, tasks, films, places and teams all work in exactly the same way.

Why does a marble sometimes win from the back? Because the pegs, funnels and platforms redirect every marble many times. Position early on carries little weight, and the course keeps mixing the field.

Will it run on a phone? Yes, the course scales to the screen. A larger screen is simply easier to watch if you are racing a long list.

Is there a way to get the same result twice? No. Each race reshuffles the starting slots, so a repeat is a coincidence rather than a setting.