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

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.