adaptive algorithms are a great application of what i called 'battleship logic' and i think its application to reducing runtime are definite realistic uses, bu i also posted in the general sense so i could apply to other things as well. oh and btw, my another idea i had for sorting a large amount of numbers in a small range (integers 1-100 etc), i never got around to implenting and testing it, would be to create a 'space' for each value, and then just storing the number of times that value pops up... but im rambling again. and btw, i think Big-O notation would be a great subjet for a tutorial.