UKH

Another grade thread? Why not?! 

A British tech trad grade tells you the hardest move, a French sport grade the overall.

What do you prefer to know?

Funnily enough: British tech on trad, and French sport on sport. Completely irrational, I know, but that´s just me.

Maybe both would work eg. 7a (6b)

Hypothetically, if the real world choice was between those things, then I'd choose French sport to get the overall difficulty; however, it's not realistic, because the UK tech grade is just one of two components (almost always).

Oooh, I think overall difficulty if I had to pick one? 

Ofcourse, both approaches are really useful for the right situation. 

This was the deciision faced in the late 70s / early 80s when tech grades first started appearing. As far as I recall it was clear that people wanted a way to express how physically hard a pitch was but it took a while for consensus to land on single move rather than cumulative difficulty.

Consensus at the time got it wrong. If we'd chosen cumulative difficulty at the time we simply wouldn't be having this debate now.

IIRC, Ron originally gave Supersonic 6c because he took the cumulative difficulty view of the tech grade. And that probably isn't far off as a French grade for that route.

British tech grade. Because the rest of the grade tells you overall how hard it is. S 4b likely one hard move.. VS 4b likely many (or indeed poorly protected, but you can tell that by looking at it).

Not another one! If you're going to start a thread about grades, couldn't you at least come up with something more original?

Thankfully we are, in that case.

If I am allowed to look at the pitch before committing to trying it, I would take the tech grade since cumulative pumpiness and sustained difficulty is generally going to be more apparent from the ground than how hard the crux is. If I am not allowed to look then I'd probably take the French grade (assuming I'm not also given the E grade).

I maybe didn't read the thread title properly, as I assumed the OP meant in addition to E grade. If just one grade then I'd take the E grade, if just one of the OP's choices then the sport grade, if E + another grade then the tech grade.

I took it to mean without. Not clear.