>>One way to speed up a brute-force algorithm is to reduce the search space, that is, the set of candidate solutions, by using heuristics specific to the proble

>>One way to speed up a brute-force algorithm is to reduce the search space, that is, the set of candidate solutions, by using heuristics specific to the problem class. My reading of that sentence from Wikipedia is that this is the step by which a brute force approach is transformed into a "clever" approach. The hard part is to find valid and useful heuristics, which often also involve switching data structures in some way.