ah, it's discourse again. I'll never get used to this system and its handling of text pasted without backticks.
Anyway, looking back at my test of one hour ago:
dig _acme-challenge.chicagotraffictracker.com TXT
; <<>> DiG 9.11.3-1ubuntu1.7-Ubuntu <<>> _acme-challenge.chicagotraffictracker.com TXT
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 21798
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
and just now:
dig _acme-challenge.chicagotraffictracker.com TXT
; <<>> DiG 9.11.3-1ubuntu1.7-Ubuntu <<>> _acme-challenge.chicagotraffictracker.com TXT
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 5581
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;_acme-challenge.chicagotraffictracker.com. IN TXT
;; ANSWER SECTION:
_acme-challenge.chicagotraffictracker.com. 1800 IN CNAME _acme-challenge.ekicocvalidation.com.
_acme-challenge.ekicocvalidation.com. 599 IN TXT ""
it's probably safe to say that the problem is solved now
.