spray and pray
v. phr.— «Drug companies are not ready to abandon the “spray and pray” random sampling of compounds to find potential new drugs, but excitement is growing about using computers to design tomorrow’s pharmaceuticals in a more rational way.» —“Advances in Drugs, Courtesy of Computers” by Barnaby J. Feder New York Times Aug. 3, 1988. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...