take a wrong turn at Albuquerque

Etymology

From the 1945 film Herr Meets Hare, often repeated in several Bugs Bunny cartoons afterwards.

Verb

take a wrong turn at Albuquerque (third-person singular simple present takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque, present participle taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque, simple past took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, past participle taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque)

1. (idiomatic) To take a wrong turn or miss a turn in a journey, so reaching a place distant from the original goal.
   • 2008, Paul Beatty, Slumberland‎, page 158:

     Against the glacial backdrop he looked like a lost minstrel who'd taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

   • 2010, Elaine Chaney, Sanity, Interrupted..‎, page 18:

     Anyways, he must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque because I walked in on him using our restroom facilities and appearing to be very confused.

   • 2013, Liliana Cohen, Daniel M. Shindler, 17: Congenital Heart Disease, Christopher Gallagher, John C Sciarra, Steven Ginsberg (editors), Board Stiff TEE: Transesophageal Echocardiography, 2nd Edition, page 163,

     Since cardiac embryology can be summed up as 9 months of looping and unlooping, you can think of the congenitally malformed heart as having taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque, and not just one time.

   • 2014, Michael W. Corrigan, Debunking ADHD: 10 Reasons to Stop Drugging Kids for Acting Like Kids‎, page 44:

     But somewhere on the road to creating a useful tool for psychiatry, in my opinion the wheels fell off the bus, or, more accurately, the carpool's navigators took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.