crapshoot

noun

crap·​shoot ˈkrap-ˌshüt 

: something (such as a business venture) that has an unpredictable outcome

Synonyms

• adventure
• chance
• enterprise
• flier
• flyer
• flutter [chiefly British]
• gamble
• speculation
• throw
• venture

Example Sentences

there are almost no sure bets in the movie business—almost everything is a crapshoot

Recent Examples on the Web

First-generation Audi TT Quattros certainly aren't the rarest of sports cars, and conventional wisdom might point out that any 21-year-old car is a crapshoot from a reliability standpoint. —Jack Fitzgerald, Car and Driver, 10 Nov. 2022

Marketers are forced to make decisions with partial or incorrect data, which makes continuous improvement a crapshoot. —Todd Juneau, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2023

In the crapshoot that is our weather, climate change loads the dice. —National Geographic, 12 Jan. 2023

The Giants don’t want all this work to come down to a one-game crapshoot against a wild-card team. —Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 Sep. 2021

The unpredictability of rainfall — when, how often and how much — makes subsistence agriculture a crapshoot for rural farmers in the Bolivian Amazon, and the randomness is expected to get only worse. —J Harris, Discover Magazine, 31 Mar. 2016

Also, the legacy of human error that can, occasionally, make the entire endeavor a crapshoot. —John Anderson, WSJ, 17 May 2022

Besides, opening-week games can be a crapshoot. —Ken Goe For The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 12 Sep. 2021

Until recently, guided skiing in the United States was a crapshoot. —Marc Peruzzi, Outside Online, 26 Feb. 2021

See More

Word History

First Known Use

1971, in the meaning defined above