Well I've gotten allergic to the term 'XY problem' itself. All too often it's tossed around by people who think they know my problem better than I do, and then dismiss me by saying 'don't do that' or 'just do something else' (this is mostly in the context of 'community support' like Stack Overflow).
It happens mostly when I distill a problem down into its most basic, abstract form, because otherwise it's too difficult to explain (I mean I can't fault people for not wanting to take 30 minutes to understand all design nuances and trade offs that were made over the last 10 years in my particular case). Then they take that abstract example as the real use case and find reasons to not answer the actual question. Then again, I'm probably in the 'cynical' category mentioned up-thread.
It's really import to clarify:
1. What they're trying to accomplish 2. The steps they're taking 3. The expected result 4. The actual result
A misunderstanding of any of those points can waste huge amounts of time and cause lots of frustration.