Editing Patience sorting (section)

==Overview==
The algorithm's name derives from a simplified variant of the patience card game. The game begins with a shuffled deck of cards. The cards are dealt one by one into a sequence of piles on the table, according to the following rules.<ref name="Burstein">{{cite journal |journal=Séminaire Lotharingien de Combinatoire |volume=54A |year=2006 |title=Combinatorics of patience sorting piles |first1=Alexander |last1=Burstein |first2=Isaiah |last2=Lankham |url=http://www.emis.de/journals/SLC/wpapers/s54Aburlank.pdf|bibcode=2005math......6358B |arxiv=math/0506358 }}</ref>

# Initially, there are no piles. The first card dealt forms a new pile consisting of the single card.
# Each subsequent card is placed on the leftmost existing pile whose top card has a value greater than or equal to the new card's value, or to the right of all of the existing piles, thus forming a new pile.
# When there are no more cards remaining to deal, the game ends.

This card game is turned into a two-phase sorting algorithm, as follows. Given an array of {{mvar|n}} elements from some [[Total order|totally ordered]] domain, consider this array as a collection of cards and simulate the patience sorting game. When the game is over, recover the sorted sequence by repeatedly picking off the minimum visible card; in other words, perform a [[K-way merge|{{mvar|k}}-way merge]] of the {{mvar|p}} piles, each of which is internally sorted.