I'd like to call "Time Out" so we can hash this out once and for all.
I only "cheat" that way if I have a doubt as to a name or a "picture" in my head. I can not speak as to others.
The Amityville Horror (2005)
Perfect example. Sometimes you do need to l"cheat" to get the right year the remake was made which gives you the time and opportunity to check who stars. I could have left out the year and Margot Kidder could have been named after this post.
I think what really needs to happen is that the notion that looking things up here is considered "cheating" on any level should be discarded entirely. The rule that posters can only respond from memory is unworkable for several reasons, starting with it's a rule that's unenforceable. If the mods decided one day to descend from on high and decree to one and all "THOU SHALT ONLY POST RESPONSES THAT DOTH RESIDE IN THINE MEMORY!" we can profess all day long how we'll follow that rule while looking shit up all the time, because unless someone hacks our computers or reads our minds there's no way to know we're doing it unless we're stupid enough to tell you.
It is also unnecessary. This is not a competitive game. There is no tournament, there are no prizes, there is no 'king of the hill.' The whole purpose of this game is literally to pad everybody's post count, and forcing all posters to rely on their memories actually excludes people. Some people have eidetic (photographic) memories, but some people don't even remember what they had for breakfast without checking their Twitter posts. Being able to look stuff up takes bad memory out of the equation and, yes, makes for more accurate responses.
There's another thing too that hasn't been discussed. Given the nature of this site and the people on it, most memory based responses are genre film related, which often makes the thread repetitive and boring. Case in point: Roy Scheider is a great actor. He's been in acclaimed films like
The French Connection and
52 Pick Up and action films like
Blue Thunder, yet you put his name in a post the answer will almost invariably be
Jaws or
2010. Richard Dreyfuss's career spans decades. He's been in films like
Who's Life is it Anyway? and
The Goodbye Girl and
Mister Holland's Opus, but his name always gets
Jaws and
Close Encounters. Robert Shaw doesn't even get a second movie. It's like Quint is the only role this guy ever played! Looking up actors and films can provide one thing some of the memories around here can't: Variety.
Looking things up is not cheating. It's a way to both keep the game running smoothly and keep it interesting.
