As a random curiosity, I tried encapsulating the bare table name inside of tick marks (`s), and that appears to allow it to work without having to prepend the database name to the table.

To me, this is odd behavior, as I can use a bare database.table without tick marks just fine. Why would it requires the table name on it's own to be surrounded by tick marks when all the documentation would lead someone to believe otherwise?

In case it's relevant, I'm connecting to a MySQL 5.5 server.