I got there! In the end. Somewhat circuitously ...

I knew this

%{ {map { $_ => 'fish' } qw(one two red blue)} }
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returned a hash ...

And I knew Dumper needed a reference ...

And I suspected that if I could successfully pass Dumper a reference to an array I might finally understand what was going on with

%{ { ... } }
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that bit.

Thank you very much.

Thanks,
cbeckley