I was thinking about the common cards mentioned in the afterword:
Creature that makes you discard a card: Likely to be Ravenous Rats.
Spell that removes two creatures from the game and brings them back: Definitely Ghostly Flicker.
I was blanking a bit on the "creature that returns a spell to your hand" (I don't think this is possible at Common rarity), until I realized it had to be Archaeomancer. In MtG terms it's sloppy syntax, since Archaeomancer returns instant or sorcery cards (often called "spells" as opposed to "creatures") from your graveyard to your hand. But everything else makes sense with this in mind; if you have these two creatures out and a Ghostly Flicker, you can in fact effectively lock out your opponent from playing the game by making them discard their only card in their draw step every turn. If it's not an instant speed card, they never get a chance to play it.
The anecdote is likely from 2012, since that was the year Ghostly Flicker was first printed. Both Ravenous Rats and Archaeomancer were part of that year's core set.
