This is the text that appears under 'x self', where it lists the user as a master thief.
We played as a group of three, and none of us are inexperienced with text-based games. Your comment that it's a "thinking person's" game wasn't particularly nice.
Here is where we ran up against issues: we didn't consider worms to be 'meat', so looking for a worm in the apple wasn't something we were expecting (again, this as a group of three people). We tried to bait animals, search for birds in the tree and fish in the lake before trying combinations of verb/noun and cutting the apple.
Throwing a rock from one room to another wasn't an action we expected (especially as you highlight that the user 'throws like a girl'). The text which clued us to throw the rock from another room was the troll noticing you throw the rock, and the troll being noticed from the cave.