But isn&#x27;t this just radix sort, effectively? That&#x27;s linear-time, no problem. There&#x27;s no fundamental rule saying that sorting has to be O(n lg n), it&#x27;s only sorting-by-comparison that needs O(N lg n) comparisons.<p>Though I guess one might point out that, without direct (and infinitely precise!) comparisons, eventually you&#x27;ll have enough sticks that you won&#x27;t really be able to tell which is the largest.