Rumour had it a devious conspiracy was afoot: Egyptians voting for a new president on Sunday were being tricked into using pens with disappearing ink so their choice on the ballot would vanish before it was counted.
"Is this the right pen?" an old man in a traditional galabeya robe shouted, holding one up to the judge supervising at a polling station in Giza, the sister city of Egypt's capital, Cairo.
There was no concrete evidence for the rumours, but some voters in polling stations around the city were clearly concerned as they marked their paper ballots.
Talk of a plot just deepened Egyptians' worries that the dirty tricks rife in elections under authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak were still in play and that powers greater than them still manipulate the system, even after a revolution last year aimed at bringing transparency.