Requests to clarify non-verbal ambiguity - good tactic?

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I read once on a site about picking up social cues (more geared towards parents of children, but with some applicability to adults) that "if you're not sure about someone's non-verbal intent, ASK".

Although I'm wondering if that could produce a more detrimental effect in the adult world (esp. for young adults), leading people to conclude that you're even more weird or "spaced out" than they suspected.

Because the problem is you'll very seldom get an honest answer to the request for clarification.

Some examples...

1) You're an Aspie guy on a date with young woman at restaurants, who fidgets quite a bit or looks around:
YOU: "Why do you keep looking around?" or "You seem to fidget a lot."
HER: "Me? Oh, I do this from time to time, it's nothing (light laugh)."
[Of course, she needs to assert herself by saying she needs to get going, but you're deemed the weirdo for not noticing the "obvious" cue that she's not into you and wants to end the date.]

2) You're dealing with a couple of somewhat juvenile and loutish peers who give you a sarcastic back-handed compliment, but you find it ambiguous as to whether it was sarcastic b/c of your difficulty in accurately parsing subtle messages.
YOU: "Umm...you seem to have some doubts about that, there's...I dunno, something about the way you say it. Can you clarify?"
Loutish guys: "Oh! No, no (faint snicker), I really thought you got that girl interested when I saw you talking to her."
[When the two imbeciles saw that you have some difficulty with "obvious" body language so they took it upon themselves to mock you for it and see how far they could go."]

3) At work: you are somewhat moody and frustrated by the explanation of something from a colleague presenting and you say "that doesn't make sense". You may not realize that you put your foot in your mouth. Then later on, you ask the colleague for a favour and they don't respond promptly like they did before. You notice he/she is upset at his/her desk and so you point out their non-verbal and ask why are they like that...[need I say more?]
(Who knows - they might think you're a narcissist as this is a common game that narcissists employ called "detaching", where they detach themselves as the cause of someone's upset and make that person wonder if it was THEM at fault, it's THEM who's over-reacting.)

Basically, with NTs, it's all-or-nothing where you either seamlessly absorb the nuance and react accordingly- be that in damage control or keeping things on an even trajectory to minimize discomfort.

Well, that's par for the course: as they say, up to 90% of [emotionally-grounded] communication is non-verbal.
To quote Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the Imitation Game: "But [encryption] is just like talking. When two people talk, they never say what they mean; they say something else, and you're just expected to know what they mean."

Asking is generally the best approach. However, how one asks can also impact if it makes things better or worse. In you situation 1, one could ask the girl if she was uncomfortable or one could ask if she had "ants in her pants".

I knew a guy that described a job interview he went on. He sat in front of the desk of the prospective employer for 15 minutes before the guy asked him anything. I suggested that since it seemed a lost cause anyway, he might have asked a few minutes into the interview saying "I am not sure if your prolonged silence is a particular interview technique or not, but the possibility that you are having a medical emergency is also a possibility I should consider. If you need assistance can you let me know".

I have attended business meetings where two people think they are in agreement, and I have observed that if I ask a question of both, I can be seen as somewhat dim for having asked. However, when one or the other starts to explain, they begin to see that they were not so much in agreement as they had thought. I suspect that much of NTs apparent smooth social interaction comes from being oblivious to details.

Yeah, that advice assumes some level of maturity and good intentions from the person you're talking to. Definitely asking for trouble if they're a teenager! At work, I have found it helpful to remind my managers from time to time that I'm not good with hints, body language or unspoken assumptions.* But it seems to work best near the start of a conversation, rather than once confusion has already begun.

My best tactic for example 1, and other awkward conversations, is "So, what's your plans for the rest of the day?" If they want to get away, it's a good prompt for them to damn well say so. If they don't, it gives them something to talk about and revive the conversation a bit. I nicked the line from a friend who uses it a lot. There's got to be other NT-wrangling gambits like that out there, if I could only figure them out.

*I am surprisingly good with sarcasm, thanks to growing up in the East Midlands where it is the default mode of communication.

I doubt this would work often unless you live in a place with lots of kind, honest people....it might work more often if you tell them that you have some kind of problems understanding, but that would also potentially make you a target of mockery/abuse or make you lose social status.

I don't bother except with people I know care about me at least a little (like on dates) and official situations that absolutely require understanding (like the doctor's office). Times of possible interpersonal danger are another situation in which such understanding is important, but asking probably won't help.

In general it seems like a waste of time to ask; either I'm close to someone or hoping to get close to someone, in which case she needs to not interact with me this way, or it's a stranger and I don't worry myself and don't want to be involved. I hate ambiguous communication (except for sarcasm/joking), and it's unlikely that the other person's intended messages is interesting or important.

I agree with starkid's weigh-in on the dilemma, the "double bind" as it were.
Because sometimes it really is "damned if you do, damned if you don't".
During part of my young adulthood at the turn of the century, when I first got diagnosed with Aspergers, I had already a pretty good idea of my non-verbal / emotional communication struggles and deficits - but I too was reluctant at times to bring it up with a female companion while on a date. I got a fair amount of dates and club make-out sessions with young women (getting their ph# after), being a good-looking guy who worked out, had a small circle of accepting friends, and a good CS/IT job...but the thing is, whenever I asked about non-verbal signal clarification, I almost never got an honest response. If anything, it just perpetuated the behaviour. I theorized (quite accurately) that in the young adult dating world, having a low threshold of ambiguity for nonverbal cues is akin to being "beta", lacking confidence, not going with the flow as would a more "confident" alpha male. The trouble is, they conflate lack of certainty with lack of confidence. If anything, looking at it through our more objective lens, asking could be considered a sign of confidence because most people in that situation would be too timid to ask 'specially if she's got the big blue eyes, long hair, and big boobs