Re: Secret Santa

> The problem is that my friends and I are all in different cities, so
> can't meet face to face. Is it possible for us to do our "Secret
> Santa" without anyone knowing who someone else has got, using only
> e-mail (and telephones, although, so far as I can tell, that is
> identical to e-mail for the purposes of this puzzle)?

couldn't you write a small program which generates a random list of the
names, and sends each person an email with the name of the person they need
to buy a present for. This is essentially a third party system, but the
computer is pretty trustworthy.