Walter,

>BTW, get rid off the deleted tag. It does not speed up your query (except in very specific circumstances). Full optimization does not mean that it is most optimal.

that used to be one of my standard first checks. It changed to making sure if the index was at least binary and then thinking on deleting<g>.
On the off chance that the deleted() index helps at least somewhere in the app the slight slurp of the pure bitmap of a binary index helps MUCH more than I had imagined after first readin about it.