Inscrutable

 WORD OF THE DAY

inscrutable / adjective / in-SKROO-tuh-bul

Definition
1: not readily investigated, interpreted, or understood
2: mysterious

Examples
“Rosters were reconstructed by enlisting former NHLers, players from the KHL and other leagues in Europe and from the college ranks and major-junior level. There is enough of a mixture of guys who are a bit past their prime and others who are relatively unknown or waiting to be discovered to make the outcome more inscrutable than usual.”
— Marty Klinkenberg, The Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), 5 Feb. 2022

Supersymmetry is a magic mirror, and everything in what we imagine to be the real world has its ghostly, inscrutable mirror image.
— Ian Stewart, Prospect, September 2003

Did You Know?
You may have to scrutinize this word closely in order to speculate as to its origins, but there is at least one clue in this sentence.
Inscrutable derives from the Late Latin adjective inscrutabilis, which can be traced back to the verb scrutari, meaning "to search or to examine."
"Scrutari" is also the source of the English words "scrutinize" and "scrutiny."
Incidentally, the antonym "scrutable" ("capable of being deciphered or understood") is a part of our language as well, though it's less common than "inscrutable."