DND_Reborn
The High Aldwin
And yet there seems to be lots of confusion for some people. Certainly WotC doesn’t encourage that interpretation in their adventures when practically every suggested ability check is qualified with a skill...
The biggest problem WotC has is that while there’s plenty of good and useful information in the core books it is generally presented in such a way as to make that information confusing at best or buried under a bunch of unrelated stuff at worst.
I guess I've just never seen any confusion about it, and it surprises me when others seem to say theres "lots of confusion" about it. Although the skill list is hardly exhaustive, most tasks do have a skill that is applicable IMO (forcing open a door or something similar being the most common offender). I think the most useful thing to learn from his article is to be flexible about ability scores and skills, choosing the best combination applicable to the task.
But, I certainly agree that the presentation of the information if very faulty in many parts.