Yes, I think this was accidentally well written, as it were. And a few reviewers did pick up on the gratuitousness of some of the puzzles (I saw some remarks on the canopic jars). Some people liked the falling rock puzzle, which at least is unusual in its implementation–it wasn’t my favorite, though, in part because that was a place where I really rubbed up against the underimplementation. (Though the specific idea that I got stuck on–because you’re on the east side of the ledge, you should know without having been told that you can go west–reminds me of a part where I got stuck in Losing Your Grip because the game didn’t explicitly tell me that I could go south from the balconies along the east and west walls.)
The one place where I think you may have successfully hoaxed a lot of people is in the story. It seems as though many reviewers are thinking about some sort of hidden depth to the story, or something that would be unlocked by deeper knowledge of Beowulf, that you’re perhaps claiming isn’t there.
Also I worked out the authorship by anagramming your pseudonym but I didn’t connect it to your post about what works well in IFComp. Very clever!