Ok, this is maddening!
This morning, after posting the reply above I re-run the sketches without changing anything and they work!
One thing that I did not mention is that yesterday, after changing something here and there and re-verifying I was getting a bunch of random errors that did not make much sense, such as that I already declared variables that were not even in the sketch anymore.....
Next I will actually try to import my large bidimensional array with the same method and I may reach for help again, but thank you for taking the time to answer.
One thing: does Arduino work better in daytime?
Any problem with full moon? 