kludge

upright=1.3|thumb|Part of the Miles Glacier Bridge, with a "kludge" (temporary fix) to make the bridge usable after earthquake damage.

A kludge or kluge () is a workaround or makeshift solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend, and hard to maintain. Its only benefit is that it rapidly solves an important problem using available resources. A famous example is the improvised scrubber that kept the astronauts alive on Apollo 13. This term is used in diverse fields such as computer science, aerospace engineering, Internet slang, evolutionary neuroscience, animation and government. It is similar in meaning to the naval term jury rig.