She was definitely noticing the right things! It's amazing how close the series comes to making that work properly. It probably wouldn't have taken more than a few tweaks along the way and some bigger ones in the final book to make us all go, "Wow, the clues were there in plain sight all this time! Such brilliant planning, and a masterful example of how conditioned we are to believe authority figures as long as everyone else says they're good guys and they give us candy."