I don't really know what "hot take" or "ice-cold take" mean when people use them because it seems so inconsistent. But if you're suggesting that's a true statement, can you elaborate?
I thought it was a super uninteresting take on a very stale gameshow lol
We'll never get to see Family Feud played at a high level because it's really casual and you won't get a family of geniuses on there very often. But assuming basic competence, like being able to consistently come up with a list of "things your wife does to annoy you around the house" (harder than it sounds), the crux of the game is predicting the unpopular answers that a random sample of Americans will give to questions like that, because those questions are what determine whether you will get the points once the obvious ones are off the board.
Just from my experience, the people who have been freakishly good card players or abnormally sharp in some other way are also very good at guessing what other people will think and say about something, and people who aren't as skilled are nowhere near as good at it. That usually plays out as a game of "What does Joe or whoever think?" And it's a valid battle of wits. But I think it's even harder to ask what the unpopular answer-giving survey takers think.
An example from a game today got me thinking about it. The survey was which movie monster is a strong, silent type. The top answer was the obvious Frankenstein (but only got like 23/100 responses), and a low-scoring answer was The Blob, and those are the two that fit the question best. But the second place answer was King Kong! If the survey was something like: "Name a loud and unruly movie monster," King Kong probably would have come in second again, this time to Godzilla (who also made the strong, silent type list).
I thought that King Kong was definitely going to be a popular answer, or even the most popular, despite him not fitting the question very well. But there are subtle turns that questions similar to this would take, and you sort of have to take the temperature of the culture as to what fits. King Kong would make any movie monster list that doesn't strongly dissuade a person from choosing him, and even then could get in for a couple points if the people surveyed could not name movie monsters on the phone, on the spot.
For example, the question might be "Where do you see a lot of boobs?" That was also from today. The obvious answer is the strip club, and that was number one. But the number two answer was "Hooters," which scored higher than "At The Beach." Even though 'Hooters' is a retarded answer to that question, it's a good one to take a shot at when all the obvious ones have been taken up, and I think knowing when to try a stupid answer and when to hold out for a few tries at the more obvious, "smart" but less-popular answers (like "The Blob" from the previous question) is a place where a person with a certain genius can really set himself apart.
Hopefully those examples made sense. I'm basically saying the game is super subtle, that the skillset it rewards is very noticeable in some freaky-intelligent people, and that nobody should care about this post at all.