Random question picker — draw questions from your own question bank

How to use the random question picker

1. Paste your questions into Question bank, one per line. Add an answer after “ : “ if you want one.
2. Set How many to draw, from 1 to 100.
3. Tick Allow repeats if the same question may come up more than once in the draw.
4. Tick Show answers to get a numbered answer list below the questions.
5. Press Draw. Press it again for a new draw.

What it does and when to use it

Teachers use it for cold calling, so every question in the bank has an equal chance and nobody can guess what comes next. Students use it to test themselves: answering questions in a random order is harder, and more honest, than going through them in the order you wrote them.

The bank can be anything: past-paper questions, vocabulary prompts, discussion topics or oral exam practice. For a printed test with lettered options, the multiple choice maker builds a worksheet and an answer key. For terms and definitions, use the flashcard maker. To plan when to come back to the same bank, the spaced repetition planner gives review dates.

How it works

Each non-empty line is one question. If it contains “ : “ (with spaces), or a question mark followed by a colon, the text after it is the answer; otherwise the line has no answer.

Without repeats, the tool shuffles the whole bank with a Fisher–Yates shuffle and takes the first questions from it. With repeats, it picks each question separately, so one question can appear several times. Both use the browser’s cryptographic random source. Asking for more questions than the bank holds, with repeats off, simply returns the whole bank in random order and tells you so. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Worked examples

Asking for too many. A bank of 2 questions with How many to draw set to 5 and repeats off returns both questions in random order, with the note “The bank has 2 questions, so all of them were drawn once in random order.”

Repeats on. A bank with one line, “Name the capital of Kenya : Nairobi”, 3 draws, repeats and answers ticked: the question appears three times and the answers read 1. Nairobi, 2. Nairobi, 3. Nairobi.

A colon inside a question. “What is 3:4 as a fraction?” is kept whole because the colon has no spaces around it, so it is treated as a question with no answer.

Limits and tips

• Questions are shown as plain text; there is no timer, scoring or reveal button.
• Empty lines are ignored, but a line of symbols such as “—” counts as a question, so remove separators.
• Keep the bank in a document and paste it in each lesson; the page does not save it.
• If an answer is missing, the answer list says “(no answer given)” for that question.