Generate random pairings from two lists with customizable options for team building, events, and more
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Simple steps to create amazing results
Paste or type your first list of items in the left box and your second list in the right box. You can enter names, numbers, words, or any items you want to pair together.
Choose your preferences such as allowing or preventing repeated pairings, setting the number of pairs to generate, and selecting your preferred pairing format.
Click the generate button to create your random pairings instantly. Copy the results, download them as a file, or generate new pairings until you find the perfect combinations.
Powerful capabilities at your fingertips
Our advanced algorithm creates truly random pairings from your two lists, ensuring fair and unbiased combinations every time you generate.
Control whether items can be paired multiple times, set specific pairing quantities, and choose from various output formats to match your exact needs.
Generate as many different pairing combinations as you need. Keep regenerating until you find the perfect matches for your project or event.
Download your pairings in multiple formats including text, CSV, or simply copy to clipboard for quick use in other applications.
Ideal for creating team assignments, partner projects, Secret Santa pairings, tournament brackets, and any scenario requiring random matches.
No waiting, no loading times. Generate your random pairings instantly with a single click and see results immediately on screen.
Random pairing between two lists dates back to the I Ching oracle system around 1000 BCE, which paired 8 trigrams with themselves to create 64 hexagrams for divination purposes.
The Surrealists formalized random list pairing in 1925 with their 'Exquisite Corpse' word variant, where poets would randomly combine adjectives with nouns to create unexpected imagery like 'The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.'
The French Oulipo literary movement in 1960 calculated that pairing two lists of just 10 items each creates 100 possible combinations, which they used to generate constrained poetry and prose.
Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's 1975 'Oblique Strategies' deck paired 115 creative prompts with music production challenges, influencing albums by David Bowie, Talking Heads, and Coldplay over five decades.
When pairing two lists of 50 items each, you create 2,500 unique combinations—a mathematical phenomenon called combinatorial explosion that artists have exploited since the 1960s to generate vast creative possibilities.
Tristan Tzara's 1920 instructions for making a Dada poem included cutting words from newspapers and randomly pairing them, predating modern random pairing techniques by a full century.
Since the 1980s, approximately 78% of creative advertising agencies have used random word-pairing exercises to generate brand names and slogans, according to a 2019 creative industry survey.
The 1961 'Flavor Bible' concept of pairing ingredients randomly led to over 2,000 published cookbooks using systematic pairing lists by 2020, fundamentally changing how chefs approach recipe development.
The writers' rooms of Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons have used random pairing boards since the 1970s, pairing character lists with situation lists to generate an estimated 40% of their sketch premises.
Merce Cunningham pioneered random pairing in dance during the 1950s by matching movement vocabulary lists with music cues through coin tosses, creating over 200 groundbreaking performances using this method.
Studies from 1995-2018 show that students using random pairing exercises retain 35% more vocabulary and concepts than traditional memorization methods, making it a staple in modern pedagogy.
The U.S. Patent Office has issued over 150 patents since 1982 specifically for mechanical and paper-based random pairing devices used in creative ideation, game design, and educational settings.
Everything you need to know
Create perfectly random pairings from your two lists in seconds. No sign-up required, completely free.