Question

I am trying to query my database to return, say, the top 16 ordered results (ordered by a field called rank) but in a random order.

I can do this easily by shuffling the returned (and ordered) 16 results using php to adjust the array that php will use. I am wondering if there is an easy way to do this directly in the query itself.

Answer 1

try

select * from 
(
    select * from your_table 
    order by rank
    limit 16
) x
order by rand()