The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie
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| The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie | |
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| Author | Thomas Fink and Yong Mao |
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| Publisher | Fourth Estate |
| Publication date | November 4, 1999 |
| ISBN | 1-84115-249-8 |
The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie (ISBN 1-84115-249-8) is a book by Thomas Fink and Yong Mao, was published by Fourth Estate on Nov 4, 1999, and subsequently published in nine other languages.
Contents |
[edit] The Book
The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie is about the history of the knotted neckcloth, the modern necktie, and how to tie both. It is based on two mathematics papers published by the same authors in the journals Nature[1] and Physica A.[2] The authors prove there are exactly 85 ways of tying a necktie and enumerate them. Of the 85, 13 stand out: the four traditional knots (the four-in-hand, Pratt, half-Windsor and Windsor) and nine others, which the authors name.
The René Magritte style front jacket illustration by Peter Garland contains an amusing error or intentionally placed easter egg: the tie knot shown is an impossible knot. The stripes on the knot and the wide blade of the tie cannot be oriented in the same direction –- they must differ by a 90 degree rotation. (This assumes that the pattern repeats along the length of the tie, and does not reverse direction at some point.)
[edit] The Science
The discovery of all possible ways to tie a tie depends on a mathematical formulation of the act of tying a tie. In their papers (which are technical) and book (which is for the layman, apart from an appendix), the authors show that necktie knots are equivalent to persistent random walks on a triangular lattice, with some constraints on how the walks begin and end. Thus enumerating tie knots of n moves is equivalent to enumerating walks of n steps. Imposing the conditions of symmetry and balance reduces the 85 knots to 13 aesthetic ones.
[edit] Knot Representation
The basic idea is that tie knots can be described as a sequence of six different possible moves, although not all moves can follow each other. Moreover, there are two ways of beginning a tie knot, and two ways of ending a tie knot. These are summarized as follows. All diagrams are drawn as the tie would appear were you wearing it and looking in a mirror.
L = left; C = centre; R = right.
i = into the page; o = out of the page.
T = through the loop just made.
With this shorthand, traditional and new knots can be compactly expressed as below.
[edit] Knots
The fourteen useful knots (out of 85 total) described in the book, in order of size, are as follows. The knots are sometimes designated by their number alone, e.g., FM2 for the four-in-hand (FM stands for Fink-Mao). A knot is self-releasing if, when the thin end is pulled out through the knot, no knot is left.
A number of knots have virtually identical variants, which differ by the transposition of L R pairs. For instance, a variant of the Half-Windsor, Li Ro Ci Lo Ri Co T, is the knot Li Ro Ci Ro Li Co T, sometimes called the co-Half-Windsor. References to the Half-Windsor in the literature sometimes refer to one, sometimes to the other. The Windsor knot has three variants which can be formed by transposing L R pairs.
| Number | Sequence | Name | Self-releasing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Lo Ri Co T | Small knot | No |
| 2. | Li Ro Li Co T | Four-in-hand | Yes |
| 3. | Lo Ri Lo Ri Co T | Kelvin | No |
| 4. | Lo Ci Ro Li Co T | Nicky (self-releasing Pratt) | Yes |
| 5. | Lo Ci Lo Ri Co T | Pratt | No |
| 6. | Li Ro Li Ro Li Co T | Victoria | Yes |
| 7. | Li Ro Ci Lo Ri Co T | Half-Windsor | No |
| 8. | Li Ro Ci Ro Li Co T | Half-Windsor variant | Yes |
| 12. | Lo Ri Lo Ci Ro Li Co T | St Andrew | Yes |
| 18. | Lo Ci Ro Ci Lo Ri Co T | Plattsburgh | No |
| 23. | Li Ro Li Co Ri Lo Ri Co T | Cavendish | No |
| 31. | Li Co Ri Lo Ci Ro Li Co T | Windsor | Yes |
| 44. | Lo Ri Lo Ri Co Li Ro Li Co T | Grantchester | Yes |
| 54. | Lo Ri Co Li Ro Ci Lo Ri Co T | Hanover | No |
[edit] Reviews
The book was reviewed in Nature,[3] The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, GQ, Physics World, and others.
[edit] References
- ^ Fink, Thomas M.; and Yong Mao (1999). "Designing tie knots by random walks". Nature 398: 31–32. doi:.
- ^ Fink, Thomas M.; and Yong Mao (2000). "Tie knots, random walks and topology". Physica A 276: 109–121.
- ^ Buck, Gregory (2000). "Why not knot right?". Nature 403: 362. doi:.
[edit] External links
- The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie at Thomas Fink's homepage
- Thomas Fink's Encyclopedia of Tie Knots
- Neckties at the Open Directory Project
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