>Fearless forecast: you fill find that some (not all) queries will be faster without Deleted() tags and, 'incidentally', SEEK/SKIP will be even faster, but for these particular queries only. However, while we may toggle our query methodology, we cannot toggle with tags in real application.

Can't argue much -- I've had very fast large table queries for years without any deleted() tags. I started using them on large tables because many were saying it would be faster, but I haven't noticed much difference. The fast queries are still fast, and the slower ones are still slower :) But the truth may only lie in testing real tables with/without deleted indexes, and see exactly how the performance measures up...