The best compliment I’ve had while gaming is a silent insult.
One of my players in college, Matt Harrop, had taken to exclaiming “COCK!” whenever I’d throw something difficult at the group — an unexpected twist, a complication, etc.
Then, so as not to interrupt play, instead of shouting it, he started miming the action of putting a rubber stamp down on an ink pad, and then stamping on my forehead (or, rather, in the air, across the room, but at the level of my forehead). He referred to this as “the cock stamp.”
When I’d come up with situations that the players got so emotionally invested in that I’d earned “the cock stamp?” That was when I knew things were going well. This was the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.