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What's With the Dice?
Diceware is a method for picking a passphrase that uses ordinary dice to select words at random from a special list called, the Diceware Word List. The original diceware word list consists of a line for each of the 7,776 possible five-die combinations.
photo by Louis Martin
UPDATED:
4 September 2025

Sample Diceware Passphrase: hunene-motura-ahata-parati-maeroa-maweke-rapere

Diceware

It's about securing your digital life.

(wikiwand) Diceware is a method for creating passphrases, passwords, and other cryptographic variables using ordinary dice as a hardware random number generator. For each word in the passphrase, five rolls of a six-sided die are required. The numbers from 1 to 6 that come up in the rolls are assembled as a five-digit number, e.g. 43146. That number is then used to look up a word in a Diceware (cryptographic) Word List . In the original Diceware list 43146 corresponds to munch. By generating several words in sequence, a lengthy passphrase can thus be constructed randomly.

The original diceware word list consists of a line for each of the 7,776 possible five-die combinations.

xkcd.com/936/

And, Thanks to Donald J. Trump Person-Woman-Man-Camera-TV is no longer a good passphrase.

The level of unpredictability of a Diceware passphrase can be easily calculated: each word adds 12.9 bits of entropy to the passphrase. Originally, in 1995, Diceware creator Arnold Reinhold considered five words (64 bits) the minimal length needed by average users. However, starting in 2014, Reinhold recommends that at least six words (77 bits) should be used.

β€œPlease confirm that no one has ever had a copy of your private key and that it uses a strong passphrase. Assume your adversary is capable of one trillion guesses per second.” — Edward Snowden, January 2013

FAQ: What are some BAD use cases for Diceware?

You should not use Diceware in any cases where it is highly likely an attacker can get a copy of your encrypted password and use high-volume cracking attempts against it. A bad case--possibly the worst case--for using Diceware would be to secure your BitCoin wallet, because all BitCoin nodes have a copy of the BitCoin Ledger, and an attacker could attempt password cracking your wallet. (source: https://diceware.dmuth.org/)

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