Look, you're not dressed like a peasent, you don't smell like a peasant, and you're not on fire like a peasent.

The trick to this sort of stuff is to make the player feel like he figured it out on his own. In Mario64 when you get to the huge mirror room, you see Lakitu behind you and 9 players out of 10 instinctively turn to look back, which causes lakitu to turn which exposes the reflection of the entrance to the next level. Wow, that was cool and I wouldn't have found it otherwise.