Play Cosmic Wimpout Online

What Is Cosmic Wimpout?

Cosmic Wimpout is a push-your-luck game played with five custom dice, four white “common cubes” and one colored cube carrying the Flaming Sun. Every throw you set aside the dice that score, add them to your turn total, and decide whether to throw the rest or stop and bank. Throw a handful of nothing and you have wimped out: the turn total vanishes. The first player past the game goal, 500 points in the standard rules and on this page, wins after everyone else takes one last turn.

The skeleton is the same as Farkle and Zilch, but the details are stranger and the numbers smaller. Scores are counted in fives and tens rather than hundreds; you need 35 in a single turn before your first points count; three of a kind is a flash and five of a kind a freight train; and the rules include two clauses that take the choice away from you. After a flash you must throw again, and if all five dice score you must pick them all up and throw again, a rule the box calls, in full, You May Not Want To But You Must. Where Farkle asks you when to stop, Cosmic Wimpout frequently refuses to let you.

A Short History of Cosmic Wimpout

Cosmic Wimpout came out of a circle of friends in western Massachusetts who played a homemade five-dice game with ordinary pipped dice, one of them red and marked with a hand-drawn sun over its 3. As the game spread through their scene they incorporated as C3, Inc., the Cosmic Wimpout Clubhouse, and had custom cubes made, first by a Massachusetts firm and from about 1980 by Koplow Games, the dice manufacturer whose name still appears on retail sets. Andrew Looney’s essay on the game in Hobby Games: The 100 Best (2007) dates the design to around 1976; the company’s own 25th anniversary tournament, held in Granby, Massachusetts on September 16, 2000, implies 1975.

The game’s fame rests as much on where it was played as on how. Its founders were Grateful Dead fans who handed out tens of thousands of Cosmic Wimpout stickers at concerts, and a traveling group of promoters styling themselves the Amorphic Cosmic Wimpout Traveling Circus taught it in parking lots and campgrounds through the late 1970s and 1980s. The story that someone had to ask fans from the stage to stop stickering the band’s tour bus in 1979 is folklore that is hard to document, but the association with Deadhead and Berkeley counterculture is real, and the rulebook’s “Guiding Light” clause, allowing any new rule the table agrees on, reads as a product of that world. C3 still sells cubes, felt boards and shirts from Leyden, Massachusetts, and an annual tournament runs at the Green River Festival in nearby Greenfield.

Cosmic Wimpout Rules

Components

• Four white cubes with faces 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10. The 2, 3, 4 and 6 are drawn as symbols (swirls, triangles, lightning bolts and stars) but count as those numbers.
• One Sun cube, usually black or red, with faces 2, ☀, 4, 5, 6 and 10. The Flaming Sun replaces the 3.
• A felt board or score sheet (optional) and something to write with.

Object

Be the first player to pass the game goal, usually 500 points (some groups play to 300), and stay ahead after every other player has taken one last turn.

How a Turn Works

1. Throw all five cubes.
2. Set aside every scoring die. Each 5 scores 5, each 10 scores 10. Three of a kind thrown together is a flash worth ten times the face. Five of a kind is a freight train. Unlike Farkle, all scoring dice come out; you do not choose to leave a 5 in play.
3. The Sun. If the Sun appears with a pair, it must complete a flash of that pair. Otherwise it counts as a single scoring die (a 10 on this page).
4. Throw or stop. Add the scored dice to your turn total. You may stop and bank the total, or throw the dice that did not score, with three exceptions: - Getting on the board. Until you have banked at least once, you may not stop with fewer than 35 points on the turn. - Futtless. After a flash, you must throw the remaining dice at least once more. - You May Not Want To But You Must. If all five dice have scored, pick them all up and throw again.
5. Wimpout. If a throw scores nothing, the turn ends and the turn total is lost.
6. Instant results. Five 6s (stars) win the game immediately. Five 10s are Too Many Points, a Supernova: you lose immediately.

Ending the Game

When a player banks a total of 500 or more, every other player takes one last turn (“last licks”). The highest total wins; a tie goes to the player who reached the goal first.

Scoring Table

Four of a kind is a flash plus one extra die, which scores only if it is a 5 or 10. Two pairs score nothing unless the Sun is present to make one of them a flash.

Worked Examples

• 5 – 10 – 3 – 2 – 6. The 5 and the 10 score 15; three dice remain. You are not yet on the board and are under 35, so you must throw the three.
• 4 – 4 – 4 – 5 – 2. Flash of 4s (40) plus a 5 is 45, with one die left. Futtless: you must throw that last die, which wimps out two times in three.
• 6 – 6 – ☀ – 10 – 2. The Sun with a pair of 6s must make a flash: 60, plus 10 for the 10, total 70. One white die remains and Futtless applies.
• 2 – 2 – 4 – 4 – ☀. Two pairs and the Sun. The Sun must flash, and with a choice it goes to the 4s: 40 with two 2s left over. Our version makes the higher-value choice automatically.
• Turn total 65 with two white dice left, already on the board. Two white dice wimp out 44.4 percent of the time and average about 5 points when they score. Stop.
• ☀ – 3 – 2 – 4 – 6. No 5, no 10, no pair for the Sun to join. The Sun on its own is a 10; four dice remain. Not a wimpout, though it looks like one.

The Odds of a Flash, a Train and a Wimpout

Cosmic Wimpout’s numbers differ from other six-sided dice games because the faces are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10 on the white cubes and 2, ☀, 4, 5, 6 and 10 on the Sun cube. The table below was computed by enumerating every outcome for each possible pool of dice, with the Sun scored as a 10 when it is not part of a flash.

A fresh throw of all five cubes produces a flash almost 30 percent of the time, which is why Cosmic Wimpout turns are livelier than a six-dice Farkle throw. The Sun cube is worth keeping in the pool: three white dice plus the Sun wimp out less often (11.8 percent) than four white dice (15.7 percent), because the Sun always scores on its own. Flashes of 3s are rare (251 of the 2,305 five-dice flashes) because only the white cubes carry a 3. A freight train of any face appears in just 11 of 7,776 five-dice throws, about 0.14 percent; five stars and five 10s each come up 2 times in 7,776, roughly once in 3,900 throws. The Sun lands with a pair and forces a flash on about 10 percent of five-dice throws.

Break-even totals

Comparing the average points of a throw with the chance of losing your turn total T gives the total at which throwing stops paying: about 4 points with one white die, 8 with the Sun alone, 11 with two white dice, 20 with one white and the Sun, 31 with three white dice, 53 with two white and the Sun, 90 with four white and about 150 with three white and the Sun. On a voluntary throw, these are the lines.

Cosmic Wimpout Strategy

1. Stop the first time the rules let you and the total is worth keeping

Many throws are compulsory. Once one is genuinely optional, compare the total with the break-even figure for the dice left; with one or two dice in hand, almost any total above 10 is worth banking.

2. Value the Sun cube

The same number of dice is safer with the Sun among them, because the Sun always scores unless it wimps with the rest. Two white dice wimp out 44 percent of the time; one white die plus the Sun, 33 percent. When you count dice left, count the Sun as a bonus.

3. Do not fear the fresh throw

Five cubes wimp out only 5.8 percent of the time and average about 26 points, with a 30 percent chance of a flash. When You May Not Want To But You Must forces you to pick up all five, that is good news, not bad: the expected gain is large and the risk is small.

4. Plan for Futtless before you celebrate a flash

A flash is worth 20 to 100, but the forced throw that follows is where turns die. A flash of 4s on your first throw leaves two dice, and two white dice wimp out 44 percent of the time; with the Sun still in hand it is 21 percent. A flash that uses the Sun is therefore worth a little less than it looks.

5. Getting on the board is a separate game

Until you have banked 35 in one turn, every throw below 35 is mandatory and a wimpout costs nothing you had. Play those turns fast; once you are on the board, every point on the table is real.

6. Play the score late

Trailing 460 to 300, safe 40-point turns will not catch up; keep throwing past the break-even totals. Leading, bank early and make your opponent chase. On last licks, the only target is the leader’s score plus one; stop the instant you pass it, and not before.

7. Learn which throws are not wimpouts

A lone Sun scores, a Sun with a pair scores a flash, and a 5 buried among four symbols scores. Beginners misread all three as wimpouts.

Common Mistakes

• Stopping under 35 before you are on the board. The rules do not allow it, and the game will not let you.
• Stopping after a flash. Futtless means one more throw, always.
• Counting a pair as points. Two 6s are worth nothing without a third.
• Treating five 10s as a jackpot. It is Too Many Points and you lose on the spot.
• Throwing two white dice with 60 on the table. A 44 percent chance of losing 60 to gain about 5.

Variants and House Rules

• Game goal of 300. The official rules offer 300 or 500; 300 makes a ten-minute game.
• Flash-clearing. The full Futtless rule in the box says a flash must be “cleared” by a throw in which none of the remaining dice match the flash face; if one does, the flash is voided and you throw again. Many groups play only the mandatory re-throw, as this page does.
• Guiding Light. The rulebook’s own house-rule clause: any new rule is legal if every player agrees before the game.

If Cosmic Wimpout’s forced throws appeal to you, Can’t Stop is the push-your-luck game where you choose your own risk column by column, Ten Thousand is the folk ancestor of the six-dice branch, and Pig is the same decision stripped to one die.

Glossary

• Cubes: What the rules call the dice; four common cubes and one Sun cube.
• Flaming Sun: The wild face on the fifth cube, replacing its 3.
• Flash: Three of a kind in one throw, worth ten times the face.
• Freight train: Five of a kind in one throw, worth a hundred times the face.
• Supernova / Too Many Points: Five 10s; instant loss.
• Wimpout: A throw with no scoring dice; the turn total is lost.
• Futtless: The rule requiring a throw after every flash.
• You May Not Want To But You Must: The rule requiring a throw of all five cubes when every die has scored.
• On the board: Having banked at least 35 in a single turn.
• Last licks: The final turn each other player gets once someone passes the goal.

Play Cosmic Wimpout Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is a two-player match against the computer with the five faces described above: four white dice showing 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10, and a black Sun die showing 2, ☀, 4, 5, 6 and 10. It is a free fan re-creation built for learning and practice, using plain numerals and a sun symbol rather than the official artwork. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by C3, Inc.; the official cubes, felt boards and rules are sold at the Cosmic Wimpout site.

Press Throw and the engine scores the throw for you: every 5 and 10 is set aside automatically, a flash is scored at ten times its face, a Sun thrown with a pair is forced into a flash (choosing the higher-value flash when two pairs are showing), and a Sun that is not part of a flash is scored as a 10. Five of a kind pays 200, 300, 400 or 500; five 6s end the game in your favor at once and five 10s end it against you, and the same applies to the computer’s throws. A throw with nothing scoring is flagged as a wimpout and the turn total is cleared. The game plays to 500 with last licks for the other player, ties going to whoever reached 500 first.

The compulsory throws are enforced: until you have banked once, Stop stays disabled while your turn total is under 35; after a flash the throw button changes to “Must throw” for the remaining dice; and when all five dice have scored the pool resets and you must throw all five again. One simplification is ours: we apply Futtless as a single mandatory re-throw and do not void the flash if the re-throw matches its face. The hint line and status bar show the exact wimpout chance for the dice about to be thrown, drawn from the enumerated table above, and the scoreboard tracks both players’ scores, whether each is on the board, and wimpout counts.

The computer plays in the open with every throw in the log. It never stops on a mandatory throw or below 35 before it is on the board. Otherwise it stops when its turn total reaches 10 with one die left, 20 with two, 35 with three and 60 with four, raising each threshold by a quarter if the Sun die is still in its pool, and by half again when you are at 400 or more and it would still trail you by more than 100 after banking. It banks immediately if the total would carry it past 500, and on last licks it throws until it is ahead of you or wimps out.

Rolls use your browser’s cryptographic random number generator. Your best final score and win-loss record are stored on your device and never sent anywhere. You may not want to, but you must: throw the cubes.