Velcro Velcro Velcro BVBA is a privately held company that produces fasteners and other products. It is known for being the original patentor of the hook-and-loop fastener, to which it has (over its objections) lent the generic name "velcro." Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral invented his first touch fastener when, in 1941, he went for a walk in the woods and wondered why Burdock seeds clung to his coat and dog. He discovered it could be turned into something useful. He patented it in 1955 and subsequently refined and developed its practical manufacture until its commercial introduction in the late
Swiss-system tournament widely used in Scrabble and it's known as the King Of The Hill format. It's considered to be distinct from the Swiss pairing system. There is a fixed number of rounds. After the last round, players are ranked by their score. If this is tied then a tie-break score, such as the sum of all their opponents' scores (Buchholz chess rating), can be used: see Tie-breaking in Swiss system tournaments. Assuming no drawn games, determining a clear winner (and, incidentally, a clear loser) would require the same number of rounds as a knockout tournament, that is the binary logarithm of