The 64 teams in the tournament are whittled down to the so-called "Sweet-16,"

VOA: standard.2009.03.25

So we've now whittled this problem down into half and so we can literally and dramatically throw half of the problem away.

如此一来,我们就把这个问题简化了一半,我们可以大胆的扔掉另一半。

哈佛公开课 - 计算机科学课程节选

In fact, better than that, this guy is already sorted as well because I whittled that problem down to size 1.

事实上，更好的结果是这个杯子也是有序的了,因为我已将这个问题的规模削减到只有1个元素。

哈佛公开课 - 计算机科学课程节选