Secret Santa questionnaire

Twenty is the upper limit before people stop answering. These are the ones that actually change what somebody buys – copy the list straight into the chat:

If you only use five, use the first five. Sizes, allergies, a favourite shop and one thing to avoid will carry almost any gift under €20.

Rather than chasing twenty answers in a group chat, run the draw here. Each person opens their own private link, sees who they drew, and writes a short wishlist on the same page. Their giver sees it on their link. Nobody has to collect anything or keep a spreadsheet of answers.

It also solves the awkward bit of a questionnaire: people answering in public, then feeling read. A wishlist behind a private link is only seen by the one person buying for them.

Send the questions with a deadline and a budget in the same message – "answers by Friday, we are spending €15–20" gets roughly twice the response rate of a bare list. Keep it playful: the question about owning three of something gets more useful answers than asking what someone needs, because almost nobody needs anything.

For an office, drop the personal ones (11, 12, 18) and keep it to sizes, tastes and a hard no. For family, keep them all – that is where the funny answers come from.

Two rules cover most of it. Buy inside the budget range, and buy for the answer to the last question first – knowing what somebody does not want eliminates more bad gifts than knowing what they like. If the answers are thin, a voucher for a named shop beats a guessed object every time.

Everything stored here – names and wishlists – is deleted automatically 60 days after the exchange date, so nobody's answers hang around until next December.