Date only search

We've been experiencing a problem when we search "on this date" in the Historical NY Times Database (with no search terms). We use this for the assignment in which students are required to find an article on the front page of the NY Times on the date that they were born. This assignment is depressing enough when we think about where we were (i.e. in college, out of college!, etc.) when these students were born, but recently we began receiving an error message and no results. Today (5/8/06) I spoke with someone at the ProQuest technical support, and he said the problem has been reported and they're working on a solution.
In the meantime, he suggested that we use the per cent (%) sign as a wild card in the search box along with the date. I tried this, and it works. Also, Carmel discovered that the date only search works in the Advance Search without anything in the search box.