I tried again, and saw the frizzle clone 2 or 3 times (not sure since I had it on standby for a few days), got kicked back to the start screen, and the playdate crashed when I tried to start the game again. Whenever I saw the frizzle clone, special dialogue didn't pop up. The last time I saw it, I got a prompt to play the simon says game, and it was gone after the minigame ended.
Thanks for continuing to play and sending me details. What you're reporting sounds like a bug, so I will have to see if I can reproduce the issue to troubleshoot.
I am thinking it may have something to do with going idle, and then returning to the game. I'll let you know if I am able to reproduce this on my end.
I have been testing but unfortunately, haven't been able to reproduce the behavior that you're seeing. I found a few specific actions that can sort of sequence-break the game, but they don't prevent forward progress. I'm sorry you haven't been able to get the intended experience, I will let you know if I do manage to track down and fix the root cause, but I won't be offended if you request a refund.
At this point, I think you've hit some kind of edge case that got your game saved in a broken state. If you haven't tried already, and you want to give it a fresh go, you can try deleting the data via the Playdate settings to start completely new. Settings > Games > Frizzle > Delete Game Data.