How do you get a knot out of the phone cord

September 5, 2007 1:10 PM

How do you get a knot out of the phone cord....where the coils seem to switch directions and the only method is to roll the kink all the way out?

you know those knots (see this link:) where the coils seem to switch directions and the only method is to roll the kink all the way out? whats the deal? there must be a way to fix them without rolling them out, and yet i cannot seem to sort it out. Surely someone has found out a way to get them out. I mean if i didn't tediously roll it all the way IN there why should i roll it OUT?

help hive mind!!

posted by chasles to technology (12 comments total)

Hold the cord close to the phone, let the receiver dangle and untwist itself.
posted by essexjan at 1:16 PM on September 5, 2007

My understanding is that you actually /are/ tediously rolling it all the way in, and that the phone cord knots occur because you are twisting the cord each time you pick up the phone and put it back into the receiver (I twist counter-clockwise each time I answer the phone). If you want to avoid having this thing coil, try twisting both ways.

Or do what essexjan said and let it dangle.
posted by Comrade_robot at 1:23 PM on September 5, 2007

Preventative: this or this (or equivalents from a different merchant).
posted by WCityMike at 1:29 PM on September 5, 2007

comrade_robot: i would buy that i am slowly winding it up but it doesn't start slowly, it seems to just appear (i know i probably just don't notice but i am sure....). as to letting it dangle, it seems to be not that type of knot. i did try but it didn't do it.....
posted by chasles at 1:34 PM on September 5, 2007

You can answer with the other hand for a while. Assuming you behave symmetrically, you'll unroll it over time also.

The problem comes from Picking it up, putting it to one ear and then rolling it halfway to the other ear, and back and forth, then putting it down. Either you transfer it between ears asymetrically or half the time you put it down, your transferred an odd number of times and put a full twist in it.
posted by cmiller at 1:41 PM on September 5, 2007

Wrap it around a broomstick or other long skinny object. You stretched it out too far and it reversed the spiral at 2 points. It's unlikely to go back to its spiral without assertiveness. Thank you for fixing it. Those of us w/ OCD tendencies appreciate these things.
posted by theora55 at 1:56 PM on September 5, 2007

Is it an office phone? If so, go in early one morning, unplug your handset and swap it with another nice, unkinked one, preferably at a desk far from yours.
posted by essexjan at 2:12 PM on September 5, 2007 [4 favorites]

If you closesly examine the coiled cord where the direction reverses, you can grab the cord with both hands, one on each side of the reverse, and then twist the reverse out of the cord. In other words, you do it right at the point of the reverse, without having to move the reverse anywhere. The twist makes the reverse disappear.
posted by exphysicist345 at 2:34 PM on September 5, 2007

Here's the answer I posted on their forum:

The single-turn instance of this knot can be produced by grasping the coil with your hands a few coil-turns apart and rotating your hands in opposite directions in the direction that "unwinds" the coil. Once you have about one complete revolution, one of the loops near the middle with become enlarged, and then collapse with a single turn of coil folded "backwards" around it's neighbour.

Removal of this type of "knot" is accomplished by reversing the process. Grasp the coil on either side of the knot and twist your hands in opposite directions, such that your hands are acting to "tighten" the coil. The knot will enlarge, the loop with flip over and the coil will collapse back into its un-knotted configuration.

It takes a little experimentation to determine exactly how many turns apart your hands should be to produce/remove the knot.

Over time, a knot of this time can grow if the same anti-coil rotation is re-applied. Each complete rotation will add one reversed coil to the knot, creating a cord that has a number of reversed coils in the middle with a "knot" at each end. Removing a large knot of this time is accomplished by the same technique. Start at one end of the knot, each iteration of the "unknot" maneuver will reduce the flipped region by one loop. eventually, the start and end of the "knot" region will meet, and one more iteration of the maneuver will remove the knot.
posted by Crosius at 3:33 PM on September 5, 2007

No need to dangle your handset if you can just unplug the cord. You may still have to grasp-and-twist to get the freaky coiling section back into normal coiling mode, but then you can let the extra twist drop off the end of the cord.
posted by eritain at 5:33 PM on September 5, 2007

Keep in mind, new cord = $5. Decide if the amount of time you spend unkinking cord is worth more to you than $5. Proceed as necessary
posted by softlord at 5:45 AM on September 6, 2007

@ all

after much time wasting and brain thinking i determined the following: based on some answers above there is a type of Knot which is caused (as described above) by twisting against the curl. this however produces TWO reverse in coil direction next to each other. the knot i am referring to is just a single reversal. so my conclusions are this: 1) there seems to be know way to remove the knot without a) uncoiling it all the way to the end or b) petty office larceny and conclusion 2)the knot is induced by someone sort of poltergeist or hilarious hidden camera TV show...
posted by chasles at 5:52 AM on September 6, 2007