Hi,
Thank you for your email (in addition to this post).
I will answer it here.
1. We did not know that a variation of "none" leads to an error message, which can lead students down the wrong path, making it impossible to solve the task. We will send the feedback to the developers of the platform. Thank you for pointing it out!
2. Regarding the false statement:
The original question asked us whether there exists some encoding problem that would need to be solved.
That is not the case.
The OP also said that they tried every previous solution.
This caused me to assume that OP tried every exact solution of the previous tasks.
Therefore, they did not try other variations of "none".
My hint was that it is a similar attack, meaning that they could try other variations of "none" without actually saying it, as I would provide the direct solution otherwise.
I am sorry if this lead you down a wrong path, but we do not feel that this is a false statement, as a variation of "none" (=> something similar) solves the task.
It is just a different variation, as you point out yourself.
I hope that this clears it up.
Feel free to ask more questions otherwise.
Cheers
Sebastian