Any loop with a knot body that consumes more than 50 rope diameters should be excluded from consideration. If you want to further narrow things, you could reduce the number down to 45 diameters, for example, etc. Gargantuan knot bodies tend to make things hard to adjust anyway.
I thought that the magic number was 42 ! (1)
This is true. (Perhaps the best presentation of Douglas
Adams's "trilogy" of 4 books is the radio one --well, that
was my first (never really got the t.v. bit), which perhaps
falls well shy of the 4 or even 3 ... books in scope. One
remembered line, to Marvin, the super-smart robot :
"Marvin, there's a whole new world opening before you!"
"Oh, no --not another one.")
The volume, the "bulk" of a knot, is not determined by the length
of the rope segments inside its nub / body.
Whoa, who's talking about
length --except what
is implied for the turNip to circumscribe so many
enclosed rope parts ("diameters")!?
What is really important in a practical knot, is simplicity.
However, simplicity is a very complex thing !
No, the important, sine qua non quality is that the
knot solves the problem. It might be that doing so
entails much material & time to tie; or otherwise,
for some other problem where time isn't available!
Inkanyezi remarked recently about the inability to
untie some of the suggested improved
bowlinesbeing a mark against them; but in that given search,
the key quality was security, not untying ease (as
one will have ample time to untie the knot, and
do so more quickly/easily than with the primary
competitor, the
fig.8 eyeknot).
In a particular case of needing speed in securing,
one might find that a quickly tied but material-inefficient
knot works better than some compact one that must
be carefully tied (and worked set).
--dl*
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