
The 85 ways to tie a tie - DanBC
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~tmf20/85ways.shtml
======
Paul_S
Tying a tie is a fairly useless skill but surprisingly it is a skill because
it can't really be broken down to a foolproof algorithm.

I have tied a tie almost every weekday of my adult life (granted that is not
much grounds for authority as it's probably 10% of the population) and whilst
I love those kind of whimsical books I can confidently say that tie
classification (and named ties in particular) is not very useful unless you
wear one tie and you have to tie it about once every few years when you get
married or go to a funeral.

Each tie you own will likely be different in width, length, geometry and
hardness but with experience you will know how to always end up with the right
length by improvising the moves as you go and evaluate the remaining length
and desired rigidity of the knot. Each move has different effects on the knot
and you can finish a knot at the correct length regardless of starting point.
Otherwise if you just follow the named ties algorithms you'll end up doing
trial and error until you find the correct starting point for the tie+knot
combination.

I've made some trivial comments on HN but this is probably the longest.

~~~
pcunite
I just up-voted you to an even 1,000.

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andolanra
A very cool paper! But it has in fact been superseded by subsequent research:
the actual number of tie-knots is much larger—at least in the tens of
thousands. The insights that led to that research on top of the Fink and Mao
paper are described in this essay that then uses those ideas to illustrate the
idea of language-oriented computer security:
[https://medium.com/message/necktie-knots-formal-languages-
an...](https://medium.com/message/necktie-knots-formal-languages-and-network-
security-2f703632a527)

The paper itself is titled, appropriately, _More ties than we thought_ :
[https://peerj.com/articles/cs-2/](https://peerj.com/articles/cs-2/)

~~~
mzl
In particular, I like that they produced a random tie knot generator:
[http://tieknots.johanssons.org/](http://tieknots.johanssons.org/)

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crux
I feel it's appropriate to link to a Python module I wrote some time ago
exploring this book and the systems behind it:
[https://github.com/subsetpark/necktie](https://github.com/subsetpark/necktie)

(The link in the read me is unfortunately expired)

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fridek
Does it feature more recent knots like the Eldredge or Trinity? I wonder how a
formal description of the "tricks" they use would look like.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Here's a paper about them:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8242](http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8242)

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jschulenklopper
And complimentary, 18 ways to tie your shoelaces:
[http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm](http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm),
Ian's Shoelace Site.

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DanBC
Normally I'd take the number out, but here it's the title of the paper and of
the book and of the wikipedia page.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_85_Ways_to_Tie_a_Tie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_85_Ways_to_Tie_a_Tie)

~~~
gus_massa
If it makes you happy, note that you are following strictly the guidelines:

> _If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous
> adjective, we 'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To
> Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the
> number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."_

