When a linear order has an order preserving surjection onto each of its suborders, we say that it is strongly surjective. We prove that the set of countable strongly surjective linear orders is a [Formula: see text]-complete set. Using hypotheses beyond ZFC, we prove the existence of uncountable strongly surjective orders.

We study the provability in subsystems of second-order arithmetic of two theorems of Harrington and Shelah [6] about Borel quasi-orderings of the reals. These theorems turn out to be provable in ATR0, thus giving further evidence to the observation that ATR0 is the minimal subsystem of second-order arithmetic in which significant portion of descriptive set theory can be developed. As in [6] considering the lightface versions of the theorems will be instrumental in their proof and the main techniques employed will (...) be the reflection principles and Gandy forcing. (shrink)