I do not think most people know about the computer science definition of algorithm involving discrete steps. For average people I feel like your definiton of “any system that automatically sorts or elecits information, apart from responding to user input” is the only one known.

Not at expert myself - but according to my sources including the German youtuber “Held der Steine” Lego is not the top quality brand. Sure the very cheap ones are likely worse, but e.g. the polish brand “cobi” has as far as I heard better quality (I mostly heard about the difference in colouring though).