Things that make other people go huh?

So I read Where Is The Life That Late I Led to my writer’s group last night and got some good feedback (as a result of which, I’m now retitling it The Glory That Was) and overall a positive response (if not as strong as some of my other works).
I’d figured—correctly as it turns out—that some of my younger cohorts might not recognize the 1970s slang (though I don’t think it interfered with understanding the story). I hadn’t considered that the Greek myths might throw them, that they wouldn’t recognize the names of Daedalus, Cadmus or Talos. They read fantasy, naturally they know that stuff, right?
Apparently not.
Going over the story this morning and making some of the changes they suggested, I considered whether there was anything I could do about that, but I don’t think so. There’s no real place for any exposition, and while it may cause some confusion, I don’t think it hinders following the plot or characters, though I suppose it reduces some of the fun.
Then I got to thinking about some of my other stories and wondering whether my fondness for esoteric knowledge might have set similar confusion traps. Are characters throwing off remarks or references that don’t make sense?
And He Bought a Crooked Cat? Maybe. I assume most people know nursery rhymes, but maybe not many. So I went back and emphasized These Are Nursery Rhymes much sooner in the story, just in case.
I Think, Therefore I Die? I think I explain my use of Cartesian philosophy and Leibniz’ calculus (a new fantasy genre—swords and calculus!) pretty well, but I do drop some references to Baphomet and Mahound (a corrupted form of Mohammed’s name) that might throw people off. I kept them, but I did rework a reference to Louis XIV’s one-time minister Fountainbleu into “a disgraced minister” to clarify things.
Of course, part of the fun of setting things in other times is using the language, the references and the details that no longer exist—and they can’t always be explained. Nobody’s going to stop in the middle of an argument and expound on the origins of the word Mahound.
But I want readers to feel the difference, not feel baffled. So I’ll keep my eye on this in the future.