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"war story" is a bit strong, but most of the time I don't go with the obvious solution, there was some investigating done that led to the conclusion that the obvious solution wouldn't work.

The trick is to know who you are talking to. If they did think of your idea, accusing them of having missed it is offensive. If they didn't consider it, asking them to justify their reasoning puts them on the spot.

The value of the sandwich method depends upon some sort of equivalence of the praise. It may have taken hours or days of work to produce the code that generated horrible results, while indentation would likely register as a triviality. To choose a better example: "Your code is great. The results were off, but how you structured it made it easy to isolate the problem."

Overall I agree with your assessment though. People giving this sort of feedback usually focus upon the problem and grasp at straws when it comes to the compliment.

Then you should be glad someone pointed out your mistake, improved the work, and gave you an opportunity to learn. You should be thanking them.