Twister Spinner Online: Automatic, Hands-Free Calls

1. 1Choose what each spin calls. Open the Entries tab and look at Each spin calls. Full call gives a limb and a colour in one spin, and it is the default. Limb only and Colour only are for groups that call the other half themselves.
2. 2Spin. Press Spin, click the wheel or press the space bar. The wheel turns for about 5 seconds and then a card shows the call. Under Spin length in the Spin tab, Fast takes about 3 seconds and Slow about 7.
3. 3Move the limb. The card shows a hand or foot picture, a dot in the mat colour and the words, for example "Right foot on Blue". Every player moves that limb to a circle of that colour.
4. 4Spin again. Use Spin again on the card. While a card is open the space bar does not spin, so close the card first if you prefer the keyboard.

If anyone asks what the last call was, open the Results tab. Winner history numbers every call in order, and Copy results copies the list. On a phone, the call choice, hands-free buttons and voice button sit under the wheel instead of in a side panel.

The wheel has 16 slices, one for every pairing of a limb (Left hand, Right hand, Left foot, Right foot) with a colour (Red, Blue, Yellow, Green). That is the same layout as the board-game spinner, which Wikipedia describes as four labelled sections, each split into the four colours.

Each slice is painted its mat colour and carries a hand or foot picture. The slices run limb by limb, so two neighbouring slices never share a colour. All 16 are the same size, so each call has a 1 in 16 chance, which is 6.25%. The pictures show a hand or a foot only, so read the words to tell left from right.

Switching between the three settings rebuilds the wheel with the entries for that setting.

Hands-free mode turns the wheel into an automatic Twister spinner. In the Entries tab, under Hands-free, choose 5 s, 10 s or 15 s. The wheel spins straight away. After every result it waits that many seconds, shows "Next call in 8 s" or the number that is left, and spins again. Choose Off to stop.

Some details that help when you plan a game:

• The pause is on top of the spin. The countdown starts when the result appears. With a 5 s pause and the Normal spin length (about 5 seconds), a new call comes roughly every 9 to 10 seconds. A short pause keeps the game quick. A 15 s pause gives players time to reach.
• The old card closes by itself. When the next spin starts, the card from the last call disappears, so nobody has to tap it.
• The countdown waits when you leave the tab. If you switch to another browser tab, the pause starts its full time again when you come back.
• Read calls aloud. Under Voice, the Read calls aloud button makes the browser say each call when it lands, for example "Right foot, blue." It uses your browser's voice, so the voice and the language depend on your device. The button only appears in browsers that can speak.

Hands-free mode also removes the caller. Nobody has to step off the mat to press Spin, and with Read calls aloud on, players can hear each call without looking at the screen.

• Lost the spinner but kept the mat: use Full call. The wheel gives the same 16 calls as the cardboard spinner.
• Want a spinner that calls by itself: use hands-free mode and put the screen where every player can see it.
• Using a real spinner for one half: switch to Limb only or Colour only and call the other half your usual way.
• No mat at all: put down four rows of coloured paper circles, one colour per row, and use the same calls on them.

The wheel only calls moves. You referee the rest. According to Wikipedia, a player is out when they fall or when an elbow or knee touches the mat, and the last player left wins.

The spinner has no memory, so past calls do not change the next one. That makes some streaks normal:

• After any call, the next call is exactly the same one in 1 of 16 spins, which is 6.25%.
• The next call uses the same limb in 1 of 4 spins.
• In a game of 8 calls, a given limb, such as Right foot, is never called about 10% of the time.
• In a game of 16 calls, a given call, such as Left hand on Red, never appears about 36% of the time.

These are equal chances, not equal shares. Over a long game each limb and colour evens out, but a short game is rarely balanced. The probabilities are arithmetic (3/4 to the power of 8, and 15/16 to the power of 16).

• It does not track the mat. It does not know which circles are taken or who is out. If every circle of the called colour is full, your group decides what happens. Pressing Spin again is the simplest rule.
• It has no voice input and no pause button. Choose Off to stop hands-free mode. After Off, choosing a time again spins straight away.
• It does not know your players. It calls one move at a time. To decide who plays the next round, use the Random Name Picker below.
• Remove winner takes a call off the wheel. The card has this button, but a normal Twister game does not need it. Switch to another call type and back to Full call to get all 16 calls again.

• To choose who plays next in a big group, use the Random Name Picker.
• To pick a player at random for any circle game, use Spin the Bottle.
• For a game where players act out words, use the Charades Generator.
• For questions and challenges between rounds, use the Truth or Dare Wheel.