Players are unpredictable when it comes to puzzles.

They will miss all the clues you planted, no matter how obvious they seem.

Instead, they’ll cling to irrelevant background details you inserted merely for color, and notice an extremely convoluted and coincidental pattern that you didn’t have in mind. You’re lucky if they later stumble upon something that ruins their cardboard castle of a theory, but then they’ll probably accuse you of ruining what you didn’t have planned in the first place.

Incidentally, this works outside RPGs too. After all, those literature students do need something to write about, even if the author insists there’s no hidden meaning.