The way that my groups play it, the party is basically a hivemind of everything that the RL players know (minus Bestiary minutiae the PCs would have zero reason to know on first encounters), plus any knowledge the PCs might get from dice rolls. Just because I'm playing the 8 Int barbarian doesn't mean I have to go sit in the corner waiting for the next roll for initiative.

We just handwave the solution as saying the smartest PC came up with the plan, or if a dumb character rolls high, we role play him catching the Smart Ball and have the other PCs react in character.

Different tables have different tolerances for metagaming. Sorry you had a table that would rather browbeat the new guy for pushing that boundary instead of giving you a chance to adjust.

That's kinda dumb... It leads into why I don't really like "puzzles" in the traditional sense in TTRPGs... Either it is simply a DC you have to beat in a roll, and that is it, or it requires the player (not the character) to be good at solving puzzles. Otherwise, it isn't a puzzle, it is just an atypical "lock" requiring an atypical "key" reminiscent of old point-and-click adventure games where you just can't proceed until you find the McGuffin (some random detail or piece of information that is hidden away that in turn "solves" the puzzle that you could not have hoped to solve without it).

I'd love to be proven wrong, but I definitely haven't seen it done well.

Vor DM offen rolled which shift would get an encounter. Then sometimes the only low roll is the one not having anything, which also prompts giggling.