"Deus ex machina" modern alternatives

Question

I'm trying to find a description for a group of people that get together at the right moment to find the perfect solution for a difficult situation. "Deus ex machina" came to mind but I was hoping that there would be a more modern, and preferably more succinct, option to describe this. So far I have found, with this site, "silver bullet" which is good but not quite as apropos as I was hoping as it seems to describe the solution rather than the people.

Any help or insight is greatly appreciated, thank you for your time!

Answer 1

"task force" -a group of people who deal with a specific problem - comes to mind. The situation isn't always difficult and neither is the solution always perfect, though.

• A task force (TF) is a unit or formation established to work on a single defined task or activity. Originally introduced by the United States Navy, the term has now caught on for general usage and is a standard part of NATO terminology.

Answer 2

This is often called a tiger team

From Wikipedia:

A tiger team is a group of experts assigned to investigate and/or solve technical or systemic problems. A 1964 paper defined the term as "a team of undomesticated and uninhibited technical specialists, selected for their experience, energy, and imagination, and assigned to track down relentlessly every possible source of failure in a spacecraft subsystem."¹

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^{1 _{J. R. Dempsey, W. A. Davis, A. S. Crossfield, and Walter C. Williams, "Program Management in Design and Development," in Third Annual Aerospace Reliability and Maintainability Conference, Society of Automotive Engineers, 1964, p. 7–8}}

Answer 3

Eleventh hour means "the last moment or almost too late" (here).

It is usually used to express that something that was desperately needed is granted in the nick of time.

You could say something like:

• The group came together in the eleventh hour.
• The group found an eleventh hour solution.

But the second example directly describes the solution, not the group, so you may not like it.