I chanced to read Dan’s piece on choosing laceless shoes and while interesting (both my shoes have laces, but I don them slip on/off style like some of the commenters, but I do occasionally re-tie), the more interesting bit is the shoelace knots site linked to from comment #19.

I never really knew what my current way of tying shoelaces is called, but now I know from reading the website. Anyway, I used to do the two-loop shoelace knot but find that it comes undone too often (I must’ve been tying the slip knot version). So I settled on looping it twice (unlike others who tie a second knot), and end up with what is called the surgeon’s shoelace knot. It’s definitely more secure. One problem I find with it is that sometimes, when I try to untie the knot by pulling one of the “rip cords,” it turns into a real knot! I think the problem seems to be whether I was tying the slip (or granny) knot version of the surgeon’s knot or the square (or reef) version. I’ll investigate this next time and report to you the results.

Note that while the website lists ten different ways to tie shoelaces, there are actually only about four different final knots. The ten ways are just variations on the method of tying those four different knots.