the Gordian knot

In the ancient city of Gordium stood an old ox-cart, and its yoke was lashed to its pole by a knot unlike any other. It had no loose ends to be seen; the cords were bound and folded back into one another so intricately that no one could tell where the tangle began or where it ended. It had been tied, they said, generations before, and had held ever since.

An oracle had fixed a prophecy to it. Whoever could untie the Gordian knot, it was foretold, was destined to rule all of Asia. And so, year after year, ambitious men came to Gordium, knelt before the cart, and worked their fingers raw at the impossible tangle — and every one of them, without exception, walked away defeated.

Then the young conqueror Alexander the Great came to the city on his march east. He too was shown the knot, and he too knelt and studied it, tugging and probing for a loose end. There was none. The harder he searched for a way in, the plainer it became that the knot could not be picked apart by any patient hand.

So Alexander stopped searching for the clever way through. He rose to his feet, drew his sword, and with a single stroke sliced the knot clean in two. The cords fell open, the tangle was undone — and the prophecy, the story says, was fulfilled by a man who refused to play the puzzle by its own rules.

Ever since, the Gordian knot names a problem so hopelessly tangled that no ordinary effort can unpick it — and to cut the Gordian knot is to solve it as Alexander did, with one bold, decisive stroke that sweeps the whole tangle aside.