I had the same reaction to calling it "fancy".

I got the answer fairly quick (didn't time it, but probably about a minute or two). In my head, I was thinking of subtraction, not even "cancelling out".

In a row, cell 1 minus cell 2 equaled cell 3.

I suppose that is an XOR pattern after all, but you only need knowledge of basic arithmetic to verbalize the pattern.

(edit: upon rereading my answer, I guess it's not fair to call it a subtraction only, since I'm still keeping around shapes from cell 1 or cell 2 provided they weren't subtracted. Apparently my brain is doing XOR while thinking of it as a subtraction)