One-O-Five Dice Game Rules

One-O-Five needs five dice per player, so a table of three works through fifteen dice, usually borrowed from a few different boxes. Two players and up can play, and any child who can recognise the faces on a die will manage the rest.

Leave the pencil in the drawer. Nothing gets written down, and the dice you have set aside just sit in front of you, where everyone can see how far along each player is.

The numbers are chased in order, 1 to 6, and everyone begins on ones. To settle who starts, have each player roll all five dice. Highest total goes first, and play carries on clockwise.

A number is finished once all five of your dice show it: five ones first, then five twos, on up to the sixes.

You get one roll per turn. Pick up whatever dice you have left, keep the ones matching the number you are after, and leave the rest until your next go. Then play moves on.

Chasing ones and rolling 2-1-6-1-4, the pair of ones goes aside. Three dice remain, and those three are what you roll next time round.

A roll with no match costs you nothing but the turn. Five dice come up empty four times out of ten, so a blank turn is nothing out of the ordinary.

The moment your fifth die shows your number, that number is complete and an extra roll follows straight away. Scoop up all five dice, roll them, and set aside whatever shows the next number in the sequence. Your turn ends there.

Down to one die on the twos, rolling a 2 carries you on to threes in the same turn. Should the extra roll come up 3-6-3-1-5, two threes are already waiting before anyone else has touched their dice.

An extra roll that finishes the next number as well earns another one. Five of a kind in a single roll is a 1 in 7776 shot, so it hardly ever happens, but the rule stands.

A single number takes more than a couple of rolls. One player's ones might run like this:

Six turns for one number is a fast run. Thirteen rolls is closer to the average, because the final die is the one that drags.

The first player through all six numbers, from five ones to five sixes, wins. Nothing is added up and there is nothing to decide along the way, so luck settles it on its own.

If the others want to sort out second place, they carry on until everyone has cleared the sixes. With young children it is usually fine to stop as soon as the first player is done.

Five dice will match your number in six rolls out of ten. One match is the usual result, two turn up in roughly one roll in six, and three or more is rare.

Each number drags at the end. A lone die shows the face you want once every six rolls, and that is where most of the throws go.

Running the whole way from ones to sixes on your own takes around 70 turns. With three or four players, the luckiest one is usually done after 55 to 60 turns, which puts a game at about half an hour.

Sixes feel slower than ones. The odds are the same all the way through, it is only the tension that builds towards the end.

Rolling nothing time after time gets dull for a small child. Let them keep rolling until at least one die goes aside. Their turn runs a bit longer, and nobody has to sit and wait for luck to arrive. You can skip the opening roll too and simply let the youngest start.

Where the ages are far apart, give the youngest three dice and the oldest five. That evens out the race without anybody being helped along.

The dice on the table are worth counting. Five threes make 15 pips and five fours make 20, so every finished number comes with a bit of arithmetic.

These rules describe One-O-Five with five dice per player and a single roll per turn. Completing a number earns an immediate extra roll, and the first player through all six numbers wins. There is no score sheet and no scoring table at all. Tables differ on who starts and on whether the extra roll is used.