There's a lot of potential ways to divide the commenters into two groups, but the one I expected the most was "people who think the correct way to deal with unfamiliar references in literature is to immediately look it up" and "people who think the first group needs to learn to use context clues already".

I'm also in the second group and rarely look things up unless absolutely necessary. I think it's a result of being dyslexic and I learned to read by figuring out what things meant in context. I do it with oral or verbal discourse as well - since I tend to mishear things. Particularly with music. Example? Flashdance - "take your passion" sounds like "take your pants off to me" - so I had to figure it out by context.

It's how I think. So I don't understand people who can't think contextually. I've noticed that thinking and reading contextually works really well with science fiction and fantasy, people who don't think or read that way - seem to struggle more with fantasy and science fiction.

Also, as an aside, the lawyer cat never fails to amuse me. Talk about a problematic filter. Now if only I could make all representations of the thing in the White House appear as kittens or cats...