whack-a-mole

whack-a-mole

1. Literally, an arcade game in which the player uses a small rubber mallet to hit robotic toy moles that pop up randomly in holes laid out across the surface of the machine. I love coming to this old arcade. I have a lot of fond memories playing Whack-a-Mole and Skee-Ball here as a kid.
2. By extension, a situation in which problems continue to arise faster than one is able to solve or cope with them, resulting in piecemeal, incomplete, or temporary results. These dang pop-up ads are so annoying! It's a game of whack-a-mole every time I go online these days! Every time we think we have the software debugged, more problems show up. We've just been playing whack-a-mole from day one!
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • literally
  • be (not) well up on (something)
  • be well up on something
  • mallet
  • cast around for
  • cast around for (someone or something)
  • buzzer
  • at the buzzer
  • cover one's tracks
  • cover tracks
References in periodicals archive
So, if books do burn, computers get hacked, and DVDs fail, a whack-a-mole full of information could persist to remind future humankind just how much we love a good cat video.
The 'whack-a-mole'-styled game gives you 10 seconds to score at least 100 points to 'find' Najib.
"The effects of law enforcement action are therefore relatively short-lived, becoming a game of 'whack-a-mole' where cyber criminals are always one step ahead."
David Barton, a Religious Right pseudo-historian who leads the Wall-builders organization and is part of Project Blitz's steering team, explained these bills in 2016 as "kinda like whack-a-mole for the other side.
"It was like playing whack-a-mole. Which symptom is it this month?
The tactical 'whack-a-mole' approach to security results in siloed efforts that have limited visibility.
We cannot play international whack-a-mole with each new threat.
Faced with numerous day-to-day decisions, fires to put out, bosses to please, clients to woo and more, it can become a constant battle of whack-a-mole that seems prohibitive to productivity and real-world results.
To allow the governor to effectively both select the committee and then reject all the committees nominees is to create an absurd sham, a system by which the governor gets to play whack-a-mole until his choice of mole surfaces.
I began to play a game of neural whack-a-mole and scratched everywhere I felt sensation.
"Over the years, we have had a whack-a-mole thing," said Michael Marion, general manager of the 18,000-seat events center.
That is the test for next 10 to 15 years in this game of whack-a-mole until the Chinese decide that this is not the way to do international relations."
Yet he remained a staunch opponent of the anything-goes mentality of sites like YouTube, assiduously issuing DMCA takedown orders and playing whack-a-mole with copyright infringers long after even his most like-minded peers had given up trying to plug the dam.
"[But] how can we dream big when are constantly playing whack-a-mole with the patriarchy?" So the editors implored the contributors, which include television writer Jill Soloway and trans activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, to put down their mallets momentarily and start dreaming.
More often than not, they adopt a reactive, "whack-a-mole" approach to compliance, post hoc addressing the crisis of the day and little else.