Jesse wrote:
I just hope that couple doesn't make it as far south as Houston
If we haven't had this specific couple, we've certainly had their functional equivalents. The last time I noticed a problem, COOGS and I were visiting Indigo Joe's on a Saturday, and with the total support of the bartender, we were sharing answers with him and with some other players on COOGS' left when a couple sat down to my right, got boxes, and proceeded to glare at us for part of a game, then stopped playing. Clearly the location wasn't used to team play--which might explain why a couple of months later, it got rid of the system despite having some folks who could have gotten it regularly in the rankings if they played together.
We also had a couple a while ago at SRO. It was during Sci-Files game when we were experiencing a box shortage, and we really needed a fifth box to be competitive, and I hoped the couple would get the hint and put our answers in. Instead, they stopped playing midway and then let their very valuable boxes just sit there for several games while they ate dinner. As they went out, I saw the woman apparently complaining to one of the managers about our answer sharing. He didn't even bother to mention it to us. (Right--a location is going to tell its extremely loyal players who are there for hours multiple times a week and dedicate themselves to putting the location's name in the rankings that we can't play as a team.)
Another came a few years ago at Catbirds when a woman also took great exception to my sharing answers on Sci-Files. She didn't call us cheaters, but indicated we'd spoiled the game for her. (There were places she could have gone if she didn't want to hear the answers instead of staying within two seats of me.)
My favorite though is from several years back when our team on one side of Catbirds sharing answers on some premium game found ourselves facing the "Yahooing Yahoos" on the other side, who put fingers in their ears and wiggled them while making obnoxious noises to show they weren't listening to us.
On many games, if we're not at one of our home locations, we're very amenable to playing cutthroat or at least sharing silently if that's how the location does it, but by the same token, if someone comes into our house, that person is not going to tell me how to play.
Brooke/AARDVK