Before you tie 'em, you have to lace 'em — and you can choose from among 43,200 perfectly legitimate ways to do it. A smart stringing strategy can actually improve your game, sportswise and otherwise, so Wired turned to Professor Shoelace (aka Ian Fieggen, an Australian programmer with a lace permutation fetish) for a rundown of the ins and outs. Here are four techniques to help your kicks kick ass. — Mathew Honan

1) Runner's stitch Are your dogs yapping after a jog? This method alleviates pressure points inside the sneaker to give your pups some breathing room. Start with a horizontal lace across the bottom eyelets. Go straight up and emerge from the second set, cross over to the third, and go up to the fourth. Repeat. 2) Hacky weave Popular in footbag circles, this method opens up the front of the shoe so there's more room to "catch" a hacky sack. Lace across the third eyelets, then dive into the second and emerge from the first. Now run the laces up, into the fourth eyelets. From there, crisscross to the top. 3) Skater special We're talking ice skating, not skateboarding. To keep the instep tighter than the upper half of the boot, lace normally to the ankle at the desired pressure, then tie a square knot (right over left, left over right) and continue crisscrossing up the calf. 4) Two-tone tie This one's pure fashion statement. You'll need two laces of different colors. String the first one across the bottom eyelets: Tuck the left end into the shoe; thread the right side through the second eyelet, then across to the opposite side, and repeat to the top. Now take the second lace and weave it through the first from bottom to top and back down. Weave until you run out of room. Then stuff the loose ends into comfortable spots inside the shoe. Kick it with your posse.

How to: Memorize a 20-Digit Number

Think beyond the killer party-trick potential: Imagine you had to learn and repeat two phone numbers quickly — in, say, 20 seconds or less. Memory guru Ron White can. Here's his basic technique:

Prep Assign a visual mnemonic to each of the digits 09 (e.g., Kevin Bacon = 6). Then create a mental filing system: Take a walk around the block and pick out 20 objects in the order you encounter them. Each represents a "folder." (Note: You can reuse your mnemonics and folders with any number.)

Learn To memorize 20 digits, replay the walk in your head. As you pass each object, "file" a digit by creating a mental image of its mnemonic at that spot — if the third digit is 6 and the third object is a bus stop, you might envision Mr. Bacon getting footloose at the bus stop.

Recite To recall the whole number, simply repeat the mental trip around the block, pulling each digit from its folder as you go. — Rachel Swaby

How to: Get Bought by Google

In October, Google bumped its 2007 acquisition tally to 15. But don't fret — there's plenty of change left in the Googleplex sofas. To get on the radar: Take chances YouTube got huge by flouting copyrights. Lawsuits were inevitable, but so was Google's $1.65 billion offer. Fill a void Blogger, Writely, and FeedBurner made Google a power player in their respective markets for under $150 million total. In B-school, that's called ROI; in Silicon Valley, it's called Tuesday. Be a threat When DoubleClick got sniffs from Microsoft, Google shelled out $3.1billion to protect its stranglehold on the digital ad industry. — Erik Malinowski

Illustrations: Jason Lee

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