Yes, you are making progress...
"Here's a lesson in common sense, or more formally logic if you will - something cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same place for however briefly a time that might be."
Now you finally have stated the essence of entanglement and of our quantum reality and it certainly is beyond our normal experience, but still within the subroutine of our reality. There are objects that can be in two places at once as matter waves.
Evolution only gives us the ability, a common sense as you say, for predictions of common action. Microscopic matter is simply beyond our normal experience. Good luck in your journey of pure common sense.
An object, like a photon, can be in two places at the same time as coherent matter waves and that superposition can persist for the time of the universe. We do not sense single photons directly, but do have equipment and technology that can. It is from these measurements that our quantum reality has emerged.
Most action of common experience, like cats and neural impulse waves, involve very short dephasing times, but simple microscopic actions, like photon matter waves, can persist as coherent with a source for very long times. We see the coherent cosmic microwave background source some 13.8 Byrs ago, or more properly a z = 1091, and another observer in a galaxy across the universe sees the same CMB source. Our reality is entangled with that observer when we see the same actions at the CMB source.
That is simply the way our universe works, our reality, or what you would say, the master gamer messed up this subroutine somehow for our reality. You explain anything you need to explain with a master gamer, but I choose to simply explain things with the reality that simply is the way it is.
As far as superposition of matter waves and what is commonly called wave function collapse, there are confusing and often conflicting different interpretations going around like viruses. This superposition of our intuitive and mathematical languages results in quantum interference and standing waves of discourse. The funny thing is that the quantum math works fine...it is only the interpretations and superposition of languages that gets entangled.
If you stand at a node of constructive interference, you believe that reality makes sense and all objects have only a local reality associated with the norms of time and matter. If you stand in an antinode of destructive interference, all reality seems to vanish and nothing seems to make sense since all objects seem to be everywhere at the same time. At a universal antinode, all objects in the universe seem to vanish in moment of destructive interference.
But common reality is only what we sense with the norms of time and matter and so the antinodes of quantum interference are just what we imagine and calculate with our mathematics and indirectly observe. Our intuition is very good for normal predictions where the norms of time and matter dominate. Our intuition tends to fail when we measure the interference of time and matter amplitudes and it is that quantum interference that is the root of our reality...or subroutine as you say.
It would seem to me like we had a very good master gamer after all...