A definitive ranking of the best crisps in the world

Tom Victor

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or don’t use Twitter), you’ll have noticed that the World Cup of Crisps was held over the weekend.

The competition was launched by Pointless co-host Richard Osman, following the runaway success of his World Cup of Chocolate at Christmas.

In fact, it was so well-received that a Super Cup is on the way, pitting the winning crisps (Pickled Onion Monster Munch) against the world’s favourite chocolate (the simple Dairy Milk).

By now we’re well aware of the winner and the runner-up of the 2016 World Cup (Wotsits put up a valiant effort).

There was even a 3rd/4th place playoff, with Quavers edging out Walkers Cheese and Onion by the narrowest of margins. It turns out people really like cheese.

But not every crisp variety has the rich and storied history of Monster Munch, or the celebrity backing of Walkers.

Some 48 entrants took part, some higher-profile than others, and we’ve crunched the numbers to produce a complete ranking from 1-48.

Head-to-head votes helped identify the top four, but we’ve determined the overall order, based on the round in which a crisp exited the competition, followed by the total number of votes (rounded to the nearest whole number) as a tie-breaker.

It produced some very interesting results, and suggested the likes of Tayto Cheese & Onion and Pringles Sour Cream & Onion may well have got further with a more favourable draw.

We got onto Osman with a question about the crisp poll: