South American Countries Wheel Spinner

This wheel picks a random South American country from a continent of twelve, which is small enough that a full wheel gives every country a real chance of coming up.

All twelve South American countries are on the wheel, so Guyana, Suriname and Paraguay are as likely as Brazil.

South America is unusual among the continents in that you can fit all of it on one wheel without the slices becoming unreadable. Twelve sovereign countries — the five above plus Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela — and adding the missing seven takes under a minute.

It is worth doing, because the seven that are missing are the ones students never pick. Suriname and Guyana in particular sit outside the Spanish-and-Portuguese story most classes are taught, with Dutch and English as official languages and histories that do not fit the pattern. A draw that surfaces them does more for a unit on the continent than another project on Brazil.

Travellers can use the same wheel to break a tie between routes that have been under consideration for too long.

What is on the wheel

All 12 of them, already loaded:

• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Chile
• Colombia
• Ecuador
• Guyana
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Suriname
• Uruguay
• Venezuela