Here is a "distributed" sorting algorithm that requires even less thinking - you don't even have to write a shuffling algorithm! 1) Start with an empty string.

Here is a "distributed" sorting algorithm that requires even less thinking - you don't even have to write a shuffling algorithm! 1) Start with an empty string. 2) Increment the string in such a way that will eventually generate all strings. 3) Give the string (and your unsorted array) to a processor that attempts to run the string as a program and go back to step 2. When a processor is given a program, if the output contains all the elements of A and the output is sorted, stop everything! You've sorted the array. It requires O(n^m) processors, where n is the number of characters possible in a program, and m is the string length of the code that finds the solution. Lots of the processors will be stuck in infinite loops.