A very unusual hypothetical situation occurred to me regarding Showoffs and Body Language. It's far-fetched, but indulge me.
Suppose that you were fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). Maybe you have a deaf relative, maybe you studied it for college credit, whatever. In any case, you've always wanted to be a contestant on a game show and auditions for Body Language are available (the situation could also apply to Showoffs but I'll use BL--I'm more familiar with it).
You clear the hurdles and are booked to appear on the show. As it turns out, your celebrity partner is *also* fluent in ASL. You found out that nugget of info from one of the various entertainment magazines or news articles.
Would it be acceptable to use ASL signs to convey the words? For non-signers, their meanings usually aren't intuitive and thus they can fall rather far afield of charades conventions. In addition, you'd get through all five words in a set *very* quickly, possibly in 15 seconds or less, and the producers would certainly figure out what was happening. It wouldn't guarantee a win since you'd still need to solve the puzzle with some words left blank, but it would offer an incredible advantage.
This advantage, however, might be unfair to the opposing team who have to schlep through the words just like most BL players did. Would you be disqualified from playing further? More generally, should these forms of shared knowledge between a celebrity and a contestant be allowed use during gameplay? Another example of this, I guess, might come up during Password or Pyramid. If Elke Sommer (say) were your partner on Pyramid and you knew German, could you use German to convey the English clues? (e.g. "An Einbauschrank is a...[closet]".)
All in all: unfair, or just playing the game?
