How often would you use the "pass the bar through" method to untangle? I find that unless there's only one obvious invert, I'm going straight to detatching back lines as it's a known quantity of time. Do you get more used to seeing multiple passes?
I noticed myself that lines can sometimes give the illusion of being absolutely farked but yet aren't. I didn't know the solution was opening the loops, thanks... i was picking each line out 1by1