Sealed DrawGuides · Running a draw
How to run a Secret Santa, and how to check the tool you run it with.
Eight guides on the parts of a gift draw the generator cannot decide for you: which rules to set and what they cost, how to get a result into everyone's hands, what to do when someone leaves in December, and how to tell whether any site of this kind does what its front page says.
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The audit
Secret Santa Without the Organizer KnowingFour tests you can run on any Secret Santa site, with the results for this one, including the test a Quick draw fails.
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Couples and households
Exclusion Rules That Still Leave a DrawCouples, households and last year's pairs, with the counts that show when your rules have left you zero draws.
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Choosing a method
Email, Links, or a Hat: How to Run One at AllWho ends up holding everyone's email address, what still exists in February, and why a blind hat draw fails about 63% of the time.
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Repairs
Someone Dropped Out: Repairs and RedrawsFour ways to fix a broken draw, each one priced in exactly how much it tells the group.
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Announcements
Secret Santa Rules You Can Copy and PasteThree complete announcements, each stating which exclusions it implies and what those exclusions cost you.
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The other leak
Wish Lists and Questionnaires Without a Sign-UpWhy sign-up wish lists put preferences on a server under a real name, plus a printable twelve-question sheet.
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On paper
Secret Santa on Paper: Slips, Name Cards, and Gift TagsFold-over draw slips, blank name cards and gift tags, and what it costs to put a secret on paper.
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Another name
Kris Kringle generatorThe Australian name for the same draw: what it means, the spend limits people set, and drawing names without a hat.
How these guides are written
Each guide rests on something you can check yourself: an arithmetic result, a test you can run in your own browser, or a sentence from a published product page. The counts quoted throughout come from the same code that runs the draw, and the test suite checks them whenever the site changes: nine valid draws for four people, 1,334,961 for ten, 4,752 for eight people arranged as four couples, and zero for a household of four inside a group of six. When a guide makes a claim about how the tool behaves, it tells you how to watch that behavior yourself.
When a choice has a cost, the guide prints the cost next to its recommendation. Repairing a drop-out after you have closed the draw tab costs one dead edge and no live ones. Adding a late joiner costs one disclosed pairing, given by consent, in the open. Printing fold-over slips puts the entire draw on paper in front of whoever collects it from the printer. Twenty-five people means twenty-five separate messages, because there is no server here to send them from. The first guide runs its four-test audit on this site the same way it runs it on any other, and a Quick draw fails one of the four tests.
Two limits apply to some of the guides. The repair and announcement guides describe agreements for a group whose members already know one another; they depend on people keeping their word, and anyone in the group can post a false announcement. A few guides also describe other products and platforms, and those facts can change after a guide was written.