With his workaround we can close the discussion I think. Thx tomtarlerandHansVogelaarfor participating! kind regards @tomsuters when stepping through the evaluation steps of my formula #3 (see pictures below), I discovered that Excel adds curly brackets around the result of the ROW...
reason and science tell us that the bright thing in the middle of the dark is going to be easier to discern than the dark thing in the middle of the bright, if for no other reason than light spreads, and dark, being the lack of light, does not. ...