> Was a nice lesson that experience can beat a lot of "smarts"

It doesn't 'beat' smarts, it's just different.

What most people call being 'smart' means you're a fast learner and/or are good at abstract thinking.

Of course someone with experience knows how to do something better than you if you have no experience, but if you're left to figure things out for yourself you might work out a more efficient way to do things faster than the experienced person did.

If you're doing a repetitive task, being smart isn't that important and so experience usually trumps being smart. If you're doing a dynamic task where you face new problems, then pure repetition doesn't help as much because each problem is different.