what is the brazen tripod ( greek myth)?

The members of this hexapolis were accustomed to celebrate a festival, with games, on the Triopian promontory near Cnidus, in honour of the Triopian Apollo; the prizes in those games were brazen tripods, which the victors had to dedicate in the temple of Apollo; and Halicarnassus was struck out of the league, because one of her citizens carried the tripod to his own house before dedicating it in the temple of Apollo.

But you're right, rarely does anyone actually say WHAT a brazen tripod is. I found this passage:

"A brazen tripod, not the Pythian one, but that which they now call a bowl. And of these bowls some were never put on the fire, and men mixed their wine in them; and the others held water for baths, and in them they warmed the water, putting them on the fire; and of these some had ears, and having their bottom supported by three feet they were called tripods."

So from that I gather it is a bowl that they were able to boil over, etc and put onto tripods.

The brazen tripod, a sort of witches brew bowl or large oven, sometimes used as a bath bowl (large enough to sit it): see Herodotus IV.179; similar to the brew bowl often depicted in original drawings of aboriginal or mythical cannibals; similar to a large dutch oven of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Used in pre-Noachic times as the bowl of Tubal Cain (cast iron), a melting pot at low heat necessary in mixing (what we would call today) biomass, genetic materials (spoken over with chants and phrases) essential in the extra-creative process; living embryos--inter- and intra-species dinosaurs were created this way.