> The line about filename shenanigans being disallowed.

I don't think that person was being verbatim or summarizing well, can you find support in the actual FAQ?

The part where the FAQ calls out filenames, the example is lmfjyh.c putting the entire program in the filename. Nothing like that is happening here.

The FAQ does talk about being so strict you can't even get bit length, but that kind of strictness is clearly not being applied to Mike's challenge.

> I think it’s completely clear that this FAQ was about the challenge.

Unless I missed there being two FAQs, you have completely misread the situation.

This is the FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/index.html

It is not about the challenge.