Turns out the rabbit hole goes deeper. Adverbs appear to not work if slice is structured:
my %a = 'a'..'z'; dd %a{<a c e>, (<g i k>, ('m', ('o')))}:kv; # OUTPUT: () %a{<a c e>, (<g i k>, ('m', ('o')))}:delete; dd +%a.keys; # OUTPUT: 13 Shouldn't it give structured `kv` data back and delete at least some keys?