Tries as the evolution of nothing

Skimming the benchmark, I didn't see any negative tests (checking for words not contained), which can be as or more important than the positive case depending on the expected use.

I'll admit I skipped straight to the conclusion after a few demos. How is knowing a "tries" count going to help me beyond knowing "nothing can be sorted faster than n(log(n))"? Every "try" is a retrieval and costs read time?

EDIT: I'm much worse at algorithms than I originally thought.