Did I say "Samisen TIB bowline" ? I was trying to use one generic name, and avoid the plural !
In fact, there are 5 of those, depending on the particular opening of the already formed knot through which we re-tuck the Tail End ( in order to
TIB-ize the eyeknot ) and the handedness of the bowlines ( left- and right-handed ones - but we do not gain anything by specifying which are the left- and which are the right-handed, because their nipping loops are crossed, so the direct correspondence to the common left- and right-handed bowlines is lost ).
Their main characteristics are very similar, so I guess which one of them we would prefer to tie would depend of how easily it can be tied-in-the-bight. However, this "easy" also depends on many things, and I am never sure what the majority of knot users will find as "easy", and what not. So, I usually avoid to show one particular of the many tying methods one can follow to tie a knot. In those particular cases, I would only like to mention that one can tie two of those bowlines by a very easy method I show in the attached picture, starting from a slipped fig.8 knot : One has only to enlarge the second bight of the fig.8 mat, the one which will become the eye of the bowline, and reeve it through the slipped bight, which will become the collar of the TIB bowline ( a tying procedure Dan Lehman calls "
backflipping"). ( Start from a sufficiently enlarged bight A, and then feed some of its rope-length to bight B, so it will become enlarged, too). If we reeve it through the one side, we get one of those 5 bowlines, and if we reeve it through the other side, we get a second one. If we twist the slipped bight 180 degrees to the left or to the right, we get two more (*). The interested reader should first tie all those bowlines in-the-end, and then, by untying them without using the Tail End, he will see how he can tied them in-the-bight - and he will probably discover other, different but equally easy methods.
So, I have to revise my previous estimation, and tell that there are more than
35 TIB bowlines
- and I do not even count those of the many bowlines tied by Alan Lee which are already TIB, or they can become TIB by the simple re-tucking of their Tail End through the collar. So much for the "
most bowlines" were supposed to be known and been tested, and had proved the monumental "conclusion" of some "testers" and their fans :
The ZL is stronger and just as secure, if not more so, than most bowlines
and it's just as easy to untie.
( the hilarious "
most bowlines" is underlined by me, the size of the letters was chosen by Dan Lehman... )
(*). The fifth knot ( the fourth in the row, in the attached pictures ), although a Samisen-like TIB one, can only be tied by a slightly different method than the based on the easily formed slipped fig.8 knot by which we can tie the other four. I had included it in the set, because it can be tied in-the-end very easily and quickly, and because its form is very similar to the rest, indeed - although it can also be dressed in a more unstable form than the shown one, which might be considered as a serious disadvantage.
P.S.1. We have already met one of those loops, the second from the left in the attached picture, in the thread about the
Span crossing-knot loops :
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=4692 P.S.2. More about those loops, and their "corresponding" bends, at :
http://igkt.net/sm/index.php?topic=4890.0 
