Many implementations of model elimination perform proof search by iteratively increaisng a bound on the total size of the proof. We propose an optimized version of this search mode using a simple divide-and-conquer refinemetn. Optimized and unoptimized modes are compared, together with depth-bounded and best-first search, over the entire TPTP problem library. The optimized size-bounded mode seems to be the overall winner, but for each strategy there are problems on which it performs best. Some attempts is made to analyze why. We emphasize that our optimization, and other implementation techniques like caching, are rather general: they are not dependent on the details of model elimination, or even that the search is concerned with theorem proving. As such, we believe that this study is a useful complement to research on extending the model elimination calculus.
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