That change was made with over a month to go before the set was to be typeset, and none of us ever batted an eyelash at that card. Often when cards are changed that will impact our constructed playtesting, a memo is sent out notifying everyone about the changes and urging people to try the new incarnations of the cards. No such memo ever went around regarding “Thought Extractor”—no one thought of it as necessary.
In hindsight it should have been obvious. Part of the problem was that our views of the card were tainted by its earlier incarnations, which were very bad. The other part of the problem was that, even without old bias, the card's power is not that easy to parse at first glance.
. . .
By no means am I saying that
Skullclamp's hidden power is an excuse for us missing it. We're paid professionals—we're supposed to find and fix stuff like that. But we were entrenched in our own internal metagame and this card slipped through the cracks.
So How Did Gottlieb Know It Was Broken?
We eventually figured out what we a monster we'd created during that dark period during when it was too late to change, but way before the set hit the streets. We knew there was going to be a train wreck, and all we could do was sit back and watch.