When I was in boy scouts, at one of the camps one year one of the people running the thing had this little game. The idea was that two people would each tie a b

When I was in boy scouts, at one of the camps one year one of the people running the thing had this little game. The idea was that two people would each tie a bowline around their waist, and connect the two ropes with a square knot. Then do it as fast as you could. Two of the kids in my troop got it down to two and a half seconds. It looked like one of those magic tricks where you flip a rope around and it knotted itself. I did eventually learn the one handed bowline, but it still takes me twenty seconds to do either that or a basic square knot.