I think the champion seems at a similar level to Tricia Pay. It will be interesting to see how he progresses.
Also, REALEST was offered today and accepted on the basis that REAL is a one-syllable adjective. (It's borderline really - I wouldn't pronounce it with one syllable but might pronounce it with one syllable when it's part of REALEST if that makes sense - REE-UL v REE-LEST.) But anyway, it does find the entry for REAL if you type
REALEST into the ODO, although this doesn't work with some other one-syllable adjectives. But the point is Susie explicitly mentioned the rule rather than the fact that the ODO finds it, so does that mean we're still allowing PISSEDER etc? And because FABBER isn't specified, are we still going for FABER?
The Countdown Team said previously (somewhere) that the rules are still the same, so it seems that nothing changes really. Does that mean we still get subjective arbitrary judgements on pluralised mass nouns? I'd rather a more objective dictionary-based approach personally, which I thought was one reason for going to the computer version. I can't remember off the top of my head what problems that might throw up though. I might check through the discussions.
Edit - One problem
already mentioned with going by the dictionary is that searching for
FLORUITED finds nothing, but it's used in an example sentence under
FLORUIT! So is it a word or not? Weirdly, searching for
FABER finds the entry for SPADEFISH (some sort of Latin species name), although unlike FLORUITED you don't have to click on "more example sentences" to unearth it, so maybe the search thing is based on that.
Edit -
Post saying the rules are the same.