TL;DR near the bottom. So for years, almost every Sunday I’d have to re-tie my tie in order to get it the right length. I tried looking up tricks, and found nothing. The method I use to tie my tie, you fix the length of the short end, and then tie the long end around it, effectively. This means you can set the position of the short end easily, but the short end’s hidden anyway, so that doesn’t help. And since ties vary in length, the visible long end is not predictably tied to the position of the short end. So I concocted some scheme to try to figure out how to tie my tie backwards. Before doing so, though, I presented the problem to my dad, and here was his solution:

(TL;DR) Tie your tie right once, then carefully untie it and notice where the big end falls. In the future, align the big end of the tie with that spot before tying the tie.

This assumes that you tie the tie right at the neck, or at least in a very consistent spot. The more you have to adjust the tie after you tie the knot, the less accurate it tends to be. I’m also assuming the big end is the end that you’re moving to tie the tie – but that may or may not actually matter. It probably matter how wide or thick the tie is, though – I suspect that might affect how much the knot shortens the big end. It almost always works for me, though.