Seems unlikely: in the experiments here the lists are not sorted in the sense of the stack overflow question (i.e. they are not in numerical or alphabetical ord

Seems unlikely: in the experiments here the lists are not sorted in the sense of the stack overflow question (i.e. they are not in numerical or alphabetical order). They are sorted (in memory) by their index in the linked list. By definition the array is already in this order. Unless I've missed something?