 The quantum adiabatic algorithm holds much promise (Farhi et al. 2001). It has been shown (Aharonov et al. 2008) to be polynomially equivalent to the circuit model (that is, each model can simulate the other with only polynomial overhead in the number of qubits and computational steps), but the caveat that is sometimes left unmentioned is that its application to an intractable computational problem may sometimes require solving another, as intractable a task (this general worry was first raised by a philosopher; see Pitowsky (1990)). Indeed, Reichardt (2004) has shown that there are simple problems for which the algorithm will get stuck in a local minimum, in which there are exponentially many eigenvalues all exponentially close to the ground state energy, so applying the adiabatic theorem, even for these simple problems, will take exponential time, and we are back to square one.