>> You have the classic case of mixed Org installations, would be my guess.
 > Aha! I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Aha.. ran into this last night also, discovering then that i had both 
(require 'org) AND (require 'org-plus-contrib) in use, breaking capture.
(rewriting my init to use-package while zapping elpa a few times really 
helped get some kinks out which sped up loading too)

maybe one day either package could recognize when the other is loaded 
and complain?

> I'm not sure how this happened, but org-reload does seem to correct the problem.
>
> Thank you, Kaushal!
>
> -pd
>