From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
Open-and-shut "simple, straightforward" first recorded 1841 in New Orleans.
No further information on the origin of this phrase is available from the other sources I checked.
Open-and-shut is certainly used in the positive sense. In fact, open-and-shut case is a common expression. Two examples:
And I also discovered that this phrase (open-and-shut) is extremely popular in golfing circles (think Open) with the hyphens dropped (open and shut or Open and shut). Examples (headlines):
I've got a use of "call shenanigans" that dates to 1998, and I strongly suspect that, even if it isn't the earliest use, it's the source of the phrase's popularity over the last decade or so.
In "Cow Days," the thirteenth episode of the second season of South Park, the boys are at a carnival playing games which they come to suspect are rigged. Kyle calls shenanigans, which brings Officer Barbrady to investigate. However, the carny allows the boys to win the game when the officer is present, and Kyle retracts his call of shenanigans.
Later in the episode, the boys discover that the prizes they were trying to win are in fact cheap knock-offs, and Kyle formally reinstates his claim of shenanigans. The claim is upheld this time by Officer Barbrady, which gives the townspeople free rein to destroy the carnival with brooms.
Again, this may not be the very first use of the term, but you asked whether anyone had made it particularly popular, and I think this is what did it. I saw the episode when it was new, and I remember quite distinctly thinking that I'd never heard the word shenanigans used that way before—but within days of the airing of that episode, several of my friends were calling shenanigans every chance they got.
Best Answer
The idiom in full is: "like looking for a needle in a haystack" it is based on the idea that it is very hard to find a sewing needle in a haystack (a tall pile of dry grass). It means when something is extremely difficult (or impossible) to find.
The first example of this idea in print was in the works of St. Thomas More in 1532:
Source: Data Hiding: Exposing Concealed Data in Multimedia, Operating Systems, Mobile Devices and Network Protocols; Michael T. Raggo, Chet Hosmer