TORTUOUS

adj. 1 twisted, twisting, winding, wandering, serpentine, turning, crooked, sinuous, bent, curled, curling, curved, curvy, curvilinear, flexuous, anfractuous, convoluted, involuted, zigzag, maze-like, mazy, labyrinthine They followed a tortuous trail through the jungle 2 roundabout, indirect, devious, intricate, involved, unstraightforward, complicated, ambiguous, ambagious, circuitous, warped, crooked, tricky, misleading, deceptive We could not help being intrigued by the tortuous Machiavellianism of the scheme