I am glad you got it figured out! Cutadapt can be a bit picky and likes to be told exactly what to do. I wish it was not so picky, but we are not the developers of Cutadapt itself 
Thanks for hopping back on and documenting that this fixed it for you 
Between your post, the post you linked, and another post from this past week, I think we can say that this is now a known issue and warn other users about it!