Don’t Switch Things You Don’t Understand, Jack(box)

My wife and I are visiting my parents while my brother and his kids are in town. One night, we decide to play Jackbox on my dad’s Nintendo Switch. I go to get the game set up, and the Switch can’t connect to the Wi-Fi.

No problem. I go in and reenter the network information and… nothing. I only get a vague “Unable to connect to network” message with an error code that, when Googled, gives me the spectacularly unhelpful advice: “Reset router, reset modem, move Switch closer to router, reboot the Switch, reenter network information, etc.” — basically all the things that a tech-competent person tries.

We’re able to get it to connect to phone hotspots, while my niece’s Switch can connect to the Wi-Fi with no problem (and no other device is having any issues), but no matter what I try, I can’t get my dad’s Switch to connect to it.

The next day, I contact Nintendo tech support via chat and beat my head against a wall for close to an hour while the tech runs me through all the “reset router, reset modem, reboot Switch” steps that I’ve already done a dozen times. Eventually, he tells me to take it to someone else’s house and try to get it to connect to their Wi-Fi. If that doesn’t work, they’ll take the console back for repairs. We don’t have anyone immediately nearby to go test it, so I give up on Nintendo tech support for the time being.

My dad insists he hasn’t made any changes to the network settings or hardware, but I decide to go into the router configuration and poke around. I try changing the network settings and even set up a guest network, and while any other device connects easily, the Switch resolutely refuses to connect no matter what I do. I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking we may have to do a factory reset on the Switch or router (or both), but I decide to comb through the offline device list and just see if I can find the Switch in the router’s history.

After going through about twenty devices, I find an offline “UNKNOWN DEVICE” that matches the Switch’s MAC address. To my astonishment, right below that, I see a big green button labeled, “Unblock device.”

Me: “Dad, why did you block this device from your router?”

Dad: “Oh. Like a week ago, I went through and blocked anything that said ‘Unknown Device.'”

Me: “…”

Dad: “What?”

Me: “You said you didn’t make any changes.”

Dad: “That’s not a network setting.”

He had to sit out the first round of Jackbox as punishment.