With the video Jeffrey “cwtrain” Eldredge uploaded to YouTube yesterday, the story of the inverse tie-knots finally seems to have come to an end. In the video Jeffrey demonstrates exactly ↵the sequence I had come up with on 19 October 2008. This knotting-sequence I had christened ‘Eldredge Variant,’ because all I did was adding two through-the-loop moves to Jeffrey’s original sequence, thereby making it into a knot. Since then I regularly wear the knot in public and even made inverse tie-knots the core topic of my Habilitationsvortrag ‘↑There is no Merovingian! Tie-knots, Neo-Dandyism and Cyberculture,’ presented on 03 February 2010. Because I only added two twists to Jeffrey’s sequence, I shied away from giving the knot a new name, although I like to call it ‘xirdalium’ in private. In order to give due credit to those involved, and to clear some matters up, here are the landmarks in the history of the inverse tie-knots:
    On 21 June 2003 Luke “edeity” Housego invents the inverse tie-knots. The day before he had seen ‘Matrix Reloaded’ at the cinema and wanted to have a tie-knot as cool as the one the character ‘Merovingian’ sports in the movie.
    On 28 September 2003 Luke publishes a .pdf-tutorial for his knot on the Internet. He calls his invention ‘edeity’s knot.’
    On 03 February 2006 Victor Allen “Lord Whimsy” Crawford III publishes a .pdf-tutorial for a tie-knot he calls ‘The Merovingian.’ In fact it is edeity’s sequence, but rendered much more clearly than in edeity’s original .pdf. Whimsy had the idea from said .pdf, but was not sure, if he had matched the sequence.
    On 16 February 2007 Henry “SimplyJustHen” Hu publishes a video on YouTube wherein he shows how to tie a knot he calls the ‘Hen Tie.’ In the video Henry makes clear that he has the idea from edeity’s .pdf-tutorial, but that he was not sure if he had matched the sequence. In fact Henry’s sequence slightly differs from edeity’s.
    On 18 February 2007 the knot called ‘Merovingian’ appears in the German version of the Wikipedia, linking to Lord Whimsy’s tutorial.
    On 04 May 2008 Jeffrey “cwtrain” Eldredge publishes a video on YouTube, demonstrating how to tie an even larger inverse tie-knot he calls the ‘Eldredge.’ Luke “edeity” Housego gave the world the inverse tie-knots, and Jeffrey Eldredge invented a subterfuge in tie-knotting not to be found in the literature so far: He simply tucks away the rest of the tie’s narrow end under the collar, thereby making possible the largest tie-knot known. This move rightfully can be called ‘the Eldredge tuckaway.’ But there is a problem with Jeffrey’s knot: It’s not a knot, but more a ‘wrapping.’
    On 19 October 2008 Alexander “zephyrin_xirdal” Knorr publishes the description and sequence of the ‘Eldredge Variant’ in his weblog, making the ‘Eldredge’ into a true knot.
    On 19 June 2010 Jeffrey Eldredge publishes the video ‘The Eldredge Knot: Revisited’ on YouTube, demonstrating how to tie the sequence of the ‘Eldredge Variant.

In detail and with background information, pictures, sequences, diagrams, and movies the, more or less, full story can be read in my old blog-entries (in chronological order): ↵merovingian ties, ↵more merovingian ties, ↵the eldredge, and ↵eldredge variant.