Chrome Sec DNS fail, CenturyLink -> G-public-DNS fail?

[RShaw]

This evening my Chrome browsing started failing with "domain name not found" for everything.  I eventually found that Firefox had no such problem and it was Chrome  specific.  Found that I had Chrome set for "Use secure DNS" via "Google (Public DNS)", and that the problem disappeared going to CloudFlare  DNS or by turning off "Use secure DNS".

Found the Public DNS troubleshooting page and did the recommended Windows cmd:

   tracert -d -w 2000 dns.google

results:

Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

...

  4    46 ms    46 ms    46 ms  208.168.128.13

  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.

...

So the first few hops were through nodes of my ISP (CenturyLink, sigh), the last of which was the 46 ms hop , then nothing but crickets.

It seems like whatever routing was supposed to happen from 208.168.128.13 was dead, but whether that was a link directly to Google's net or still CenturyLink, or some intermediary, I have no idea.

Anybody have any insight into this problem?

Thanks.