Hook-and-loop fastener Mestral's patent expired, prompting a flood of low-cost imitations from Taiwan, China and South Korea onto the market. Today, the trademark is the subject of more than 300 trademark registrations in over 159 countries. George de Mestral was inducted into the national inventors hall of fame for his invention. The big breakthrough George de Mestral made was to think about hook-and-eye closures on a greatly reduced scale. Hook-and-eye fasteners have been common for centuries, but what was new about hook-and-loop fasteners was the miniaturisation of the hooks and eyes. Shrinking the hooks led to the two other important differences. Firstly,
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