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Nornagest comments on Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I labeled an exam question as "tricky" because if you applied the solution method we used in class to solve similar looking problems you would get the wrong answer. But it occurred to me that if the question had been identical to one given in class but I still labeled it as "tricky" the "tricky" label would have been accurate because the trick would have been students thinking that the obvious answer wasn't correct when indeed it was. So is it always accurate to label a question as "tricky"?
That's kind of a Hofstadter-esque question. I think the answer is "no", but the reason why depends on what meta-level you're looking at: if the label refers only to the object-level question, then it's straightforwardly true or false; but if you construe it as applying to the entire context of the question including its labeling, then it's possible to imagine a trick question that's transparent enough that labeling it as such exposes the trick and stops it from being tricky. It can be a self-fulfilling or a self-defeating prophecy.
In other words, it's turtles all the way down :-)