I suppose this is my fault for packing so much into a single query, but I really do want to use tablesort on it. Here's the query (pager_query with a limit of 20) SELECT n.nid, n.title, n.status, n.created, n.uid, ra.energy, nc.totalcount, nc.daycount, ppc.totalcount AS printcount, pmc.sentcount, r.realname, cs.comment_count, v.value AS votes FROM node n INNER JOIN realname r ON r.uid=n.uid INNER JOIN radioactivity ra ON ra.id=n.nid LEFT JOIN node_counter nc ON nc.nid=n.nid LEFT JOIN node_comment_statistics cs ON cs.nid=n.nid LEFT JOIN votingapi_cache v ON v.content_id=n.nid AND v.function='sum' LEFT JOIN print_page_counter ppc ON ppc.path=CONCAT('node/', n.nid) LEFT JOIN print_mail_page_counter pmc ON pmc.path=CONCAT('node/', n.nid) WHERE n.type = 'blog' AND n.status = 1 ORDER BY ra.energy DESC On my test site, this runs really fast - but there are only 6 rows. On the production site, there are 8,000 nodes and this query takes 35 seconds to run. EXPLAIN tells me: id select_type table type possible_keys key key_len ref rows Extra 1 SIMPLE ra ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 6 Using temporary; Using filesort 1 SIMPLE n eq_ref PRIMARY,node_status_type,node_type,uid PRIMARY 4 drupal6b.ra.id 1 Using where 1 SIMPLE nc eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 4 drupal6b.n.nid 1 1 SIMPLE cs eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 4 drupal6b.ra.id 1 1 SIMPLE v ALL NULL NULL NULL NULL 3729 1 SIMPLE ppc ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 2738 1 SIMPLE pmc ALL PRIMARY NULL NULL NULL 2745 1 SIMPLE r eq_ref PRIMARY PRIMARY 4 drupal6b.n.uid 1 Using where With the performance I see, I am not suprised to see "filesort" in there. Can someone suggest ways to improve the performance? Nancy