A comment creativename made a while ago...

Maybe the contest is easy because people are starting to get a feel for things more than ever, though...who knows?

I definitely think that's the case. Back in 2004 the average person didn't know how to use the x-stats, and while this contest hasn't been heavily x-stat based so far, people can still make comparisons using Ngamer's tool. Also, the number of competitors has increased so much that it's a lot harder to get into the top 5 than it used to be.

Since we're now a quarter of the way through the contest, it's a little interesting to look at the standings. So far we've had three full length Oracle Challenges. In those contests, the people who were on the leaderboard after 16 days finished on the final leaderboard 7/15 times. If you don't count people who missed matches, then people who were in the top 5 after 16 matches finished on the final leaderboard 7/10 times, and finished in the top 10 9/10 times - but of course there's a selection bias where people who imploded were less likely to predict the whole contest.

In 2004 the ultimate winners had already established themselves by this point (King Morgoth was 2nd on day 16 of the spring contest, and kawaiifan was 6th on day 16 of the summer contest), but if you're not up there yet, don't despair - Xuxon came from 54th on day 16 to win the summer 2005 Oracle Challenge.
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CATS's Road to the Character Battle V Championship
Round 1: Sonic