sorter is a merge sort where the comparison “which is bigger?” is answered by you instead of by arithmetic. That's the whole idea, and it's why the ranking it produces is genuinely consistent.
The only thing you ever do is choose between two items. Each choice is one data point: “I prefer X to Y.” None of them is hard on its own.
Merge sort splits your list in half, orders each half the same way (recursively), then merges the two ordered halves by walking down both and asking you only the comparisons it actually needs. Because each answer helps position whole groups at once, the total number of questions grows like n×log(n), not n². Sixteen items take roughly forty-odd questions; thirty-two take about a hundred and twenty.
If you've said A beats B and B beats C, sorter already knows A beats C and won't ask. That inference is what saves you from the hundreds of comparisons a full round-robin would need.
Misclicks happen and one wrong answer can move an item several places, so Undo steps back a question at a time. When two items are genuinely equal, “Too close” records a tie and keeps things moving — use it sparingly, since ties leave that particular order up to chance.
Everything runs in your browser. Your list and answers are never uploaded; the finished ranking is encoded into the page link, so you decide whether to share it. Try it →