[jimnotgym]

Since this is Hacker News I am going to take issue with some technical points. This is not a new knot, it is simply a reef knot with the ends slipped. Generations of sailors know it as a way of reefing (reducing the area of) sails . What this is, is an alleged new method for tying a reef knot with the ends slipped more quickly than the boy scouts 'left over right, right over left' method. I think this is an important distinction.

Actually I love this site! Does one thing, and does it well.

[jacobolus]

Who ever said this was a new knot?

The reef knot (square knot) with both ends slipped is called a bow knot (shoelace knot).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reef_knot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoelace_knot

[jimnotgym]

> Who ever said this was a new knot?

> I tie my shoelaces with my own "Ian Knot", the World's Fastest Shoelace Knot (yes – I am the inventor):

It says so in the first line. How can you be the inventor of an existing knot?

[Franciscouzo]

Did you even read the article? It says so in the first sentence.

[jacobolus]

The bottom of the linked page clearly says “The finished ‘Ian Knot’ is identical to [..] the Standard Shoelace Knot”

If you click through to the page about the “standard shoelace knot” it adds: “This knot appears in The Ashley Book of Knots as #1212 and #1214, ‘The Bowknot’, where it is described as ‘... the universal means of fastening shoe-strings together.’” (That’s a reference book from the 1940s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashley_Book_of_Knots)

Edit: note that this is a site aimed at an audience of people who want to tie their shoes, not topologists or sailors. Pedantic arguments about acceptable definitions of the word “knot” are ridiculous in this context.

[jimnotgym]

But he has already claimed to be the inventor in the first line. This is even more shocking the article contradicts itself. I will only accept the term 'the Ian shoelace tying technique'