Non-Letters in Puzzles

[maradnu]

I hit the following quote tonight:

"We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past. "
— Thomas Wolfe

The quote had a blank associated with the "/" character.

Having seen a similar situation before the site crash, I recalled that putting the symbol would not be accepted, but ANY letter entered would. In this instance I entered "Q" for the "/", and the answer was accepted.

First time I've seen non-letters in a puzzle since the crash.

So (next time) why can't the webmaster take the liberty of translating to "one thirtieth," instead of 1/30th, to avoid the problem by sticking with all letters?

Or, just have the slash pre-printed as part of the answer?

Finally, since I'm a newbie and haven't yet encountered numbers in answers, does that mean ANY cryptogram may contain digits instead of all letters?

[maradnu]

The puzzle did not have blanks corresponding with the numbers. The numbers themselves were shown, as was the \, but it had a blank associated with it, even though it was shown.

Pre-crash, I hit a couple of puzzles with "special characters" associated with puzzle blanks, and as with the one noted above, they required a letter filled in - any letter. In one instance I used a letter that had already been used in the puzzle, and it took it anyhow.

I don't object to numbers in the puzzle - sometimes those can provide good clues as to the words around them.

[Laura]

I've also noticed this phenomenon (before and after the crash). Inserting any letter seems to work.

Pretty strange....

Laura