It's actually valid English, and was intentionally written that way. Would "oft-asked" make this clearer?

I admit I never encountered it out of literature classes.

Regarding your proposal, it's completely on you. Definitely connecting the two would avoid people asking themselves the very same (perhaps stupid) question. :)

Thanks for replying to quickly btw. :)

I wouldn't have said that oft-something is particularly archaic nor non-US english personally. But anyway, it's changed to oft-hypen. Thanks for your feedback and the pull request!