Dr Knuth already knew of these shirts; evidently, one was sent to him by their creator. I wasn’t really expecting to break the news to him, but I was eager to hear his opinion.
Knuth says, “It’s a fun shirt,” but “I wish they’d used a better photo.” Asked whether he ever wears it, he hazards, “maybe when I’m playing with my grandchildren.”
The back story of the photograph is that Knuth was visiting Sweden on some trip or another, and someone pointed out a really marvelous spiderweb. The photographer was trying to take a picture of the web and just happened to catch the good Don in mid-marvel. That’s his best guess—the reproduction quality is pretty low, so it’s hard to identify the photo’s origins positively.
tags are very appropriate. knuth has a sweet hat.