Rube Goldberg
Absurdly complex contraption
Rube Goldberg describes a machine or system that accomplishes a simple task through absurdly complicated means—a chain of exaggerated steps where a ball rolls down a ramp, tips a lever, releases a bird, which pecks a button, and so on.
Named for the American cartoonist who drew such contraptions.
The term applies figuratively to any needlessly convoluted process: The tax code is a Rube Goldberg machine.
Also appears as an adjective: a Rube Goldberg solution.
- contraptionImprovised or odd mechanism
- jury-riggedTemporarily fixed with scraps
- absurdWildly illogical
- makeshiftTemporary, improvised substitute
- mad scientistDeranged researcher archetype
nonsense · cause and effect · chain reactions · domino effects · kinetic sculptures · Pulitzer Prize · overcomplicated · pulleys · cogs · levers · ludicrousness · satire · domino · bureaucracy · mousetrap · lateral thinking · roll · ingenuity
- Silly Inventions
- CartoonistsCharles Schulz, Thomas Nast, Frank Miller, Jim Davis, Matt Groening
- STEM competitionshackathon, coding challenge, egg drop, bridge building, balsa wood
- impracticalitiesimpracticality, pipe dream, pie in the sky, castle in the air, fool's errand
- overcomplexityoverengineering, overthinking, convolution, intricacy, overdesign
- illustratorsillustrator, Norman Rockwell, Quentin Blake, book illustrator, Maurice Sendak
Rube Goldbergstreamlined
Made smooth and efficient
efficient · minimalist · elegant · simple · direct
Rube GoldbergBauhaus
Influential modernist design school
Japanese minimalism · form follows function · less is more · kaizen · Swiss engineering
Rube Goldbergwabi-sabi
Aesthetic valuing transience, incompleteness
functionalism · modernism · brutalism · industrial design · Marie Kondo