Guacamole strategy

[Phil White]

For a few weeks now, I have been hearing Boris Johnson talking about a "guacamole strategy" for dealing with localized outbreaks. It has always puzzled me, as has his bizarre pronunciation.

So today I bothered to try to find out why "guacamole".

Turns out it is a "whack a mole strategy", which is only marginally less bizarre to me. After a bit more research, it appears that I am the only person in the known universe never to have played "Whack-a-mole", nor indeed to know of its existence.

Please tell me I am not the only one.

[trolley]

I'm familiar with the game but had never heard of a "Whack-a-Mole strategy". It is an apt description, though...frantically trying to hammer out solutions as they pop up...being reactive rather than proactive. I like it but I probably will start using "guacamole strategy". That is, until someone accuses me of racism after assuming I'm slagging Mexico. I was surprised to read that Whack-a-Mole wasn't invented until 1975. I was sure that it had been a fixture on the midway of every fair as far back as I can remember.

[BonnieL]

I, too, thought the term had been around a lot longer - the phenomena certainly has been! Perhaps there was a different phrase to describe the same thing?