How do you all pronounce kluge or kludge?

[klugesmith]

How many readers here learned the word as rhyming with fudge, sludge, and begrudge?

I learned it in 1970's by hearing, not by reading, and it always rhymed with huge, luge, and centrifuge.  That doesn't need or want a "d" in the middle, unlike the contraction of refrigerator to fridge.  Goes with a meaning that is semi-positive: a thing that gets the job done expediently, even if not pretty or easy to maintain.

Here's one comprehensive account, which puts the shorter spelling first.
https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/kluge/

Wikipedia has plenty of documented speculation about the word's spoken and written history.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge
"The word has alternate spellings (kludge and kluge), pronunciations (/klʌdʒ/ and /kluːdʒ/, rhyming with judge and stooge respectively, and several proposed etymologies.
...
The Jargon File concludes:
    The result of this history is a tangle. Many younger U.S. hackers pronounce the word as /klooj/ but spell it, incorrectly for its meaning and pronunciation, as 'kludge'. ... British hackers mostly learned /kluhj/ orally, use it in a restricted negative sense and are at least consistent. European hackers have mostly learned the word from written American sources and tend to pronounce it /kluhj/ but use the wider American meaning! Some observers consider this mess appropriate in view of the word's meaning. " (Want to bet the Wiki writer identifes as a hacker?)


Of course Kluge is also a German surname, pronounced with a hard g and, like Porsche, with two syllables.

[MRMILSTAR]

The only way that I have ever heard it pronounced is rhyming with "huge".

[johnf]

Sorry Kluge
for some reason due to your posts on putting strange things together it thought
"verb
gerund or present participle: kludging
improvise or put together from an ill-assorted collection of parts.
"Hugh had to kludge something together"
Definitions from Oxford Languages
"
so hence my misspelling humble apologies!!

[Uspring]

During my years in the US I've come about both ways of spelling and pronunciation.

Of course Kluge is also a German surname, pronounced with a hard g and, like Porsche, with two syllables.

Being a native german speaker, I can confirm this. The adjective "klug" can be translated as "smart" bordering on "wise".
A mnemonic help was for me the german word "klotz", which is "lump" in English, calling up the imagery of something stuck together by glue rather than by appropriate means.