toss-up

plural toss-ups · alternative tossup

1. idiomaticA decision in which neither choice is clearly favorable or unfavorable, or for which the outcome does not matter.

   It's really a toss-up between the red skirt with blue stripes and the blue skirt with red stripes. They both look good and fit well.

   1 more example

   But at the moment when everything was going so well, there came one of those unforeseeable chances that reduce even the most circumspectly arranged plots to the significance of a mere toss-up.

   1934, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], The Bravo of London

2. Either of two outcomes that are equally likely.

   “He’ll do,” said the Doctor, quietly. “It must have been a toss-up all through the night. ’Think you’re to be congratulated on this case.”

   1889, Rudyard Kipling, “Only A Subaltern”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 151

   1 more example

   No longer is the best picture going to be a toss-up between that troika of national-historical heavies: Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty. Instead, a warm welcome back for Life of Pi, widely dismissed by many as "this year's Hugo" but this column's dark-horse pick from October.

   2013 January 11, Tom Shone, The Guardian

3. The toss of a coin used to decide some issue.
4. A toss-up question.