I find your version about the same. BlaisePascal's snippet and yours move me more toward:

%h = map { $_, $h{$_} }  ( sort { $a <=> $b } keys %h )[0];
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But I don't see this as that important. My post was not about re-writing a bit of code so I could find it an easier read. My post was about improving code reading skills so all code is easier to read.

How much complexity one can absorb on one line seems to me to be a good thing to increase. Contrarily, perhaps I should try to derive more info from the indentation of code.

Be well.