A very cool paper! But it has in fact been superseded by subsequent research: the actual number of tie-knots is much larger—at least in the tens of thousands. The insights that led to that research on top of the Fink and Mao paper are described in this essay that then uses those ideas to illustrate the idea of language-oriented computer security: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;message&#x2F;necktie-knots-formal-languages-and-network-security-2f703632a527" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;message&#x2F;necktie-knots-formal-languages-an...</a><p>The paper itself is titled, appropriately, <i>More ties than we thought</i>: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peerj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;cs-2&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;peerj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;cs-2&#x2F;</a>