"knotty" in the adjective sense
1. baffling, elusive, knotty, problematic, problematical, tough
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"
2. gnarled, gnarly, knotted, knotty, knobbed
used of old persons or old trees covered with knobs or knots
"gnarled and knotted hands"
"a knobbed stick"
3. Byzantine, convoluted, involved, knotty, tangled, tortuous
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"
4. knotty, snarled, snarly
tangled in knots or snarls
"a mass of knotted string"
"snarled thread"
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
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