85 Ways to Tie a Necktie. Two mathematical physicists from Cambridge University invented a mathematical notation to describe the tying of necktie knots, then generated a list of all possible knots within the restrictions imposed (on the number of loops a knot can have) by the length of a tie. Exactly 85 possibilities exist, and it turns out that 10 of them are “good”, including six newly-discovered designs. Their paper about the issue made it into the scientific journal Nature and is now posted, with diagrams, on the Internet. Since I wear a tie every day to work, I’m game.