like nailing jelly to a tree

jargon, humour Used to describe a task thought to be

impossible, especially one in which the difficulty arises from

poor specification or inherent slipperiness in the problem

domain. "Trying to display the "prettiest" arrangement of

nodes and arcs that diagrams a given graph is like nailing

jelly to a tree, because nobody's sure what "prettiest" means

algorithmically."

[Jargon File]

(1997-12-23)