knotty

(s) making great mental demands; hard to comprehend or solve or believe
- a baffling problem
- I faced the knotty problem of what to have for breakfast
- a problematic situation at home
baffling, problematic, problematical, elusive, tough,
(s) used of old persons or old trees; covered with knobs or knots
- gnarled and knotted hands
- a knobbed stick
gnarled, gnarly, knobbed, knotted,
(s) highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious
- 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"- Sir Walter Scott
- tortuous legal procedures
- tortuous negotiations lasting for months
tortuous, convoluted, tangled, Byzantine, involved,
(s) tangled in knots or snarls
- a mass of knotted string
- snarled thread
snarled, snarly,

baffling problematic problematical elusive tough gnarled gnarly knobbed knotted tortuous convoluted tangled Byzantine involved snarled snarly

knotty pine