Correction: Today, we learned that the slowness was from a runaway GoogleBot indexer. So I can say with confidence that it was not a system malfunction, in fact, the resilience of the site allowed it to hold up while it was getting hammered.
Detail: Apparently someone submitted hundreds of thousands of web pages to Google, which we think is a serious flaw in their design---they should have been able to detect this and stop it. We've contacted Google for resolution.
Fortunately, the sniper is totally isolated from the user interface, so it held up the entire time. You can add snipes with confidence. More info is on the dashboard.
Thanks again for your helpful feedback.
bidslammer