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I'm prickly and one-eyed
And quite hard to spy
With fodder for mysteries and puzzles galore
When you see me you'll be pleased
But feel rather teased
And pointedly wonder why you'd missed me before

Who am I?

Edit: I made some minor changes to the riddle to make it work a bit better.

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3 Answers 3

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It is

a needle

because

needles are sharp (prickly) and have an eye, and are well hidden (hard to spy) in hay-stacks (fodder). And if you are teased, you may feel a bit needled.

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  • $\begingroup$ That's pretty much it, although more precisely the answer I was looking for is an idiom involving this thing. If you flesh it out a bit more to correspond more closely to my intention (there's also still a small clue you didn't address) I'll accept this answer. $\endgroup$
    – user17947
    Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 23:28
  • $\begingroup$ needle in a haystack $\endgroup$
    – Patrick Roberts
    Commented Jan 18, 2016 at 8:57
  • $\begingroup$ @Patrick Roberts - I shied away from specifically calling it a needle in a haystack (rather than a needle), because of the last line "And pointedly wonder why you'd missed me before". In my opinion if you were really looking for a needle in a haystack you would expect to need a lot of looking before you found it and would not wonder why you missed it... $\endgroup$
    – Penguino
    Commented Jan 18, 2016 at 20:17
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I think the answer is:
Hint.
It is one-eyed, as in it has just one i in it. It has information about the puzzle, hence it is its fodder. It teases us for not knowing the answer yet. And yet we're pleased when we see it because of the possibility that we might solve the question with this new information. And when we do know the answer, we might wonder how did we miss it on the first place.

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  • $\begingroup$ The anticipation is killing me! $\endgroup$
    – Daedric
    Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 12:43
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, it's a creative idea but not the right answer. $\endgroup$
    – user17947
    Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 16:21
  • $\begingroup$ @BigBlackBox OK I'll keep trying. :D $\endgroup$
    – Sol Infinus
    Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 16:25
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Is the answer:

The answer

I'm prickly and one-eyed
And quite hard to spy

There can only be one answer and they can be very hard to spot. Also hard to grasp, hence the prickly part

With fodder for mysteries and puzzles galore

The answer gives the riddle purpose: to be solved!

When you see me you'll be pleased

You should feel the satisfaction that you solved a riddle first

But feel rather teased

The suspense when your answer is so close to the real answer

And pointedly wonder why you'd missed me before

When you finally see the answer, you will wonder "Why didn't I think of that before?" (Answer: You're human, not Jon Skeet's bot :) )

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