Measuring Player Skill

Over the weekend, I read the Swords & Wizardry Quick Primer for Old School Gaming. This is a great read, highly recommended, and it brought up a thought, what is player skill?

Let me back up a moment, and explain my thoughts. In the old days, roleplaying was a direct interaction between a player, and the referee, for example:

GM: "You see of door with a brass padlock at the end of the hall."
Player: "I carefully examine the lock, and try moving it slightly with my dagger."
GM: "The lock appears normal, but you notice a small needle trap concealed behind the lock on the door...."
Player: "I carefully bend the needle so it pokes into the wood of the door, disarming the trap."
GM: "It bends easily, but the padlock is still secured tightly."

Today, we have much more advanced rules, with statistics and ratings for everything:

GM: "You see of door with a brass padlock at the end of the hall."
Player: "I carefully examine the lock, and try moving it slightly with my dagger."
GM: "Make a search roll, DC 20."
Player: "My positive mod is 8, I rolled a 14 on the d20, totaling a 22 - success."
GM: "The lock appears normal, but you notice a small needle trap concealed behind the lock on the door...."
Player: "I carefully bend the needle so it pokes into the wood of the door, disarming the trap."
GM: "Roll a disarm trap check, DC 18."
Player: "I roll a 13, plus 9 for my skill, which makes a 22 - success."
GM: "It bends easily, but the padlock is still secured tightly."

In both examples, I used the same text, but inserted all the modern amenities of search skills, trap disarm DCs, and immersion-breaking rules reference. Nowadays, the following shorthand play-style is very common to see:

GM: "You see of door with a padlock at the end of the hall. Roll a search roll, DC 20."
Player: "My positive mod is 8, I rolled a 14 on the d20, totaling a 22 - success."
GM: "You spot a needle trap behind the lock. Roll a disarm trap check, DC 18."
Player: "I roll a 13, plus 9 for my skill, which makes a 22 - success."
GM: "Trap disarmed, roll a DC 25 for the lock...."

In the old days, the most important measure of player skill was the cleverness of the player. With more modern games where every skill is vectored out, and every ability completely written out in the rules, the measure of player skill is the player's knowledge of the rules.

Now, a good referee will factor in the player's smarts during a game, no matter what they are playing. The difference is in games where there are rules for everything, how you measure a good player relies more on character builds, math, and the ability to memorize and cross-reference rules. In the old days, there wasn't much support for builds, skill rolls that interact with the environment, and building a character with formulas and DPS calculations. You did your best with what you had, and you twisted fate into your favor with how clever you played your character.

It is a huge difference, and one of the reasons behind the OSR's popularity. How do we get back to games that reward clever players, and not rote memorization?