But I believe it is more like the number of "lives" you have, right? So it really is that the number of whammies is the number of incorrect guessed allowed minus one or equivalently, the number of whammies minus one is the number of incorrect guessed allowed.
This wording is a bit confusing, so maybe just keeping the wording and shifting the numbers from 1 - 5 to 0 - 4 could be better too.
Anyway, I'm sure you'll find a great way to rephrase this. I hope this helps and thanks for the new ability to penalize mistakes! This is a big addition to JetPunk.