crapshoot

From crap +‎ shoot.

crapshoot (plural crapshoots)

1. A game of craps.
2. (US) A venture with a highly risky or unpredictable outcome.

• 1951, August 11, Bill Smith, The Billboard, article El Rancho Gets Mucho Puncho as Middleton, Robbins Go Over Big, page 3:

  The audience, mixed up between corny tourists and the crap-shooting hepsters, yocked it up to make Robbins a solid hit.

• 1971, September 10, Thomas Thompson, LIFE, article The Crapshoot for Half a Billion, page 47:

  … the new television season—the event called more bluntly “the half-billion-dollar crapshoot” by those who have made it and who now await blessing or malediction …

• 2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age : A Romance, paperback edition, Fourth Estate, page 163:

  What a crapshoot, fatherhood. I played, and fucked it.

• 2003, The West Wing, episode 5-04 Han:

  The negotiations are a crapshoot. Whole damn job's a crapshoot.