noun

• 1A critical or vital point; a crucial or difficult question.

  More example sentences

  • ‘the big cruncher—have you got anything to contribute to skating?’
  • ‘But for me, this is the punchline cruncher: The House of Commons is, and will remain, a GM-free zone.’
  • ‘And when you're done, I'd say you're half-way to getting the winner of that Turkey-England cruncher.’
  • ‘It's the mental challenge that's the cruncher.’
  • ‘But the real cruncher to his view is provided by the department itself.’

  Synonyms

  problem, difficult question, vexed question, difficulty, quandary, dilemma
• 2A computer, system, or person able to perform very large or complex operations.

  See also number cruncher

  More example sentences

  • ‘a global information cruncher’
  • ‘PDA users have known for some time now that the devices are more than just contact database crunchers.’
  • ‘Windows booted without any hiccups, and to test load performance I ran a cruncher (Seti@Home) on it for about 10 minutes before concluding that the new speeds were solid.’
  • ‘You want proof this system was invented by a bunch of clueless numbers crunchers?’
  • ‘If you go by what the experts and data crunchers say, the worker bees of the world are dooming the civilized, unhurried meal to an untimely death.’
  • ‘With their own little super, engineering and research teams can bid adieu to month-long delays while waiting for access to a jumbo cruncher at a National Science Foundation supercomputing center.’
  • ‘The company's code crunchers might be boring and bland, but they are also disciplined and driven.’
  • ‘A ‘Supercomputer Room’, chilled by strong air-conditioners awaits the arrival ‘soon’, through a soft loan, of an estimated US $19.5 million terabyte cruncher.’
  • ‘Tall, slim and athletic, she looks more like a beach volleyball player than a nerdy data cruncher.’
  • ‘Now you'd think if I can figure this out, one of our big time money crunchers could too, wouldn't you?’
  • ‘In a very smart move, the PPC family was designed as a 64-bit cruncher with backward binary-compatibility for 32-bit applications.’