A game about being unoriginal
The Loneliest Number
Pick a number between 1 and 100. Any number. Go with your gut, be as random as you like — and then find out how many thousands of other people went with exactly the same one.
Pick a number from 1 to 100
Don't think about it too hard. That's the experiment.
About This Game
Ask a person for a random number and you will not get one. You will get a performance of randomness, and that performance is remarkably consistent from person to person and country to country.
People avoid round numbers for looking deliberate. They prefer odd over even. They lean high rather than low. And above all they gravitate to numbers containing a seven, which is how a single number ends up being chosen roughly seven times more often than chance would predict. This game shows you the shape of that bias, and where your own pick landed inside it.
How To Play
- Pick a number from 1 to 100. Trust your instinct rather than working at it.
- The board reveals itself: brighter squares are chosen more often, dimmer ones almost never.
- See what share of people picked your number, and where it ranks out of all 100.
- Play again and try to find something genuinely lonely. It is harder than it sounds, because the obvious ways to be unusual are the ways everyone else is unusual too.
Why This Exists
Because it is a very fast, very cheap demonstration of something unsettling: your sense of your own spontaneity is not reliable. The moment you tried to be unpredictable, you became predictable in a way that a stranger could have anticipated in advance.
The best part is the trap inside it. Asked which number others would be least likely to choose, people overwhelmingly answer 37 and 73 — which are two of the most popular answers there are. Even our attempts to second-guess the crowd land us right back in the middle of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Loneliest Number?
You pick any number from 1 to 100, and the game shows you how often people actually choose that number, how it ranks against all the others, and whether your pick was genuinely rare or exactly what everybody else picks.
Am I being compared to other players in real time?
No. The percentages come from a fixed distribution modelled on published research into how people choose supposedly random numbers, including a survey of 200,000 people run by Veritasium. Nothing you pick is uploaded, and no live counts are being kept.
Why does everybody pick 37?
Because it feels random and almost nothing else is attached to it. It is prime, it is not round, it has no cultural baggage, and it contains a seven. People reaching for a number that seems unpredictable converge on exactly the same one, which is why 37 is the single most common answer.
What is actually the loneliest number?
The multiples of ten. People reject them instantly for feeling too tidy and deliberate to count as random, which is precisely what leaves them almost untouched. If you want a genuinely unpopular answer, pick a round number, and the board will show you which one is loneliest of all.
Why are people so bad at being random?
Because we do not generate randomness, we perform it. Asked for a random number, people avoid anything that looks like a pattern, avoid round numbers, prefer odd numbers, favour numbers containing seven, and lean high rather than low. The result is a distribution with enormous spikes in it.
Does it work on mobile?
Yes. It works on any modern mobile browser, including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. The board of numbers is designed to be tapped with a thumb.
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