Pick a letter.
Just the letter.
A-Z, Scattergories mode, vowel/consonant filters, custom alphabets. Big enough to read across the room, small enough to fit anywhere.
Alphabet & settings
About this generator
The simplest tool on the site. You came here to settle one thing: which letter? Type type type, click pick, big letter shows up. That's the whole product.
What's worth knowing: it's actually fair. A surprising number of "random letter" tools just call Math.random() * 26, which has subtle modulo bias and can favor certain letters by tiny but measurable amounts over millions of draws. We use crypto.getRandomValues with rejection sampling — the same source banks use for cryptographic keys. Every available letter has exactly the same probability, full stop. Overkill for a Scattergories game? Sure. But it costs nothing, so why not.
The Scattergories preset matches the original 20-sided die: A-Z minus Q, U, V, X, Y, and Z. Some house rules add U back; if that's you, switch to the English preset and exclude the rest manually. The custom alphabet field accepts any Unicode characters you paste in, so it works fine for Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, hiragana, even emoji. One character per slot — including diacritics treated as their own characters. Vowel/consonant toggles are based on standard English rules (A, E, I, O, U); Y counts as a consonant for filter purposes because trying to be clever about "sometimes Y" creates more bugs than it solves.
If you want a single starting letter for a name game, this is the right tool. If you actually need the whole word, that's two clicks away. Need a number 1-26 for a different reason? The number generator is what you want.
What people use it for
Scattergories
The official letter die only goes one direction. Toggle Scattergories mode for the canonical 20 letters, or stay in English mode and exclude letters you've already used.
Classroom games
Pick a letter, name an animal that starts with it. Pick again, name a country. Visible randomness keeps everyone honest about whose turn it was.
Name-by-letter exercises
"Tell me your name and an adjective starting with the same letter." Icebreaker that doesn't make people groan, especially when the letter is X.
ABC songs and drills
Pick a letter, sing the sound, write three words that start with it. Repeat. The big-letter display works from across the room or on a projector.
Drinking-game starters
"Everyone names a country starting with this letter. Last to answer drinks." The neutral randomness saves friendships.
Writing constraints
Write a paragraph where every sentence starts with the same letter. Pick once, set a timer, see what comes out.
How it works
The picking
We start with the alphabet you've selected (English, Scattergories, or your custom string), drop any excluded letters, then drop vowels or consonants if those toggles are off. That gives us a final pool. We draw an index using crypto.getRandomValues with rejection sampling — discarding any draw that lands above the largest clean multiple of pool size, which kills the modulo bias that random % N would introduce.
Multiple picks
For batches of more than one letter, "Allow duplicates" controls whether picks are independent. With duplicates on, every pick uses the full pool. With duplicates off, each picked letter is removed before the next draw — so you can't ask for more letters than the pool contains.
State & sharing
Settings live in the URL query string (?alpha=scat&count=3&exclude=q) via history.replaceState. Recent picks are stored in localStorage for the last 10 results. Loading the URL anywhere recreates the exact configuration; the embed iframe accepts the same query string.
Common questions
What's the official Scattergories letter list?
The original Scattergories die has 20 letters: every letter except Q, U, V, X, Y, and Z. Toggle the Scattergories alphabet preset under settings to match. Some house rules include U; switch to the English preset and exclude what you don't want.
Can I use a non-English alphabet?
Yes. Set the alphabet preset to Custom and paste any characters you like — Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, full kana, emoji. Each character becomes one entry. Diacritics are treated as their own characters; if you want É and É treated the same, type them the same way.
Why am I getting the same letter twice?
By default, draws are independent — each pick uses the full filtered alphabet, so duplicates can happen. Turn off Allow duplicates if you want unique letters within a batch. With it off, you can't request more letters than the pool contains.
How is this different from a number generator from 1 to 26?
Functionally the same — you could generate a number 1-26 and look up the letter. The letter picker handles vowel/consonant filtering, exclusion chips, and custom alphabets natively, and the result displays as a giant letter you can read across the room. Less arithmetic, more game.
Are Y and W vowels?
We treat A, E, I, O, U as vowels — the standard five. Y is sometimes a vowel in English orthography, but for filter purposes it counts as a consonant here. If you need different rules, build a custom alphabet.
Can I exclude specific letters?
Yes. The exclude field accepts any letters you want removed from the draw — type them as a string, no separator needed. Useful when you've already used a letter in Scattergories or want to skip Q without going full Scattergories mode.
Is the picker truly random?
Yes — it uses crypto.getRandomValues with rejection sampling. Every available letter is exactly equally likely. We don't use Math.random, which has subtle modulo bias for non-power-of-two ranges.
Related generators
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