knotty

Adjective
  1. Making great mental demands;
    Hard to comprehend or solve or believe (synset 300750063)
    "a baffling problem"; "I faced the knotty problem of what to have for breakfast"; "a problematic situation at home"
    similar to: difficult, hard - not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure
    same as: baffling, elusive, problematic, problematical, tough
  2. Used of old persons or old trees;
    Covered with knobs or knots (synset 302320915)
    "gnarled and knotted hands"; "a knobbed stick"
    similar to: crooked - having or marked by bends or angles; not straight or aligned
    same as: gnarled, gnarly, knobbed, knotted
  3. Highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious (synset 302184401)
    "the Byzantine tax structure"; "Byzantine methods for holding on to his chairmanship"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations lasting for months"
    similar to: complex - complicated in structure; consisting of interconnected parts
    same as: byzantine, convoluted, involved, tangled, tortuous
  4. Tangled in knots or snarls (synset 300256586)
    "a mass of knotted string"; "snarled thread"
    similar to: tangled - in a confused mass
    same as: snarled, snarly

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