DD-WRT dhcp-host in Additional Dnsmasq Options not working - again

The solution posted below worked for several days then failed. It's back to bench testing if I put any more time into it.

Trying to move dnsmasq service from a Linux VM to a newly setup DD-WRT router running v3.0-r48810 std 05/06/22.

I'd like to keep the static addresses in ip addr order so instead of entering into DHCP Server/Static Leases I am trying to use dhcp-host in Additional Dnsmasq Options which the DD-WRT Static DHCP documentation suggests is possible - but it is confusing and it's not working correctly on the Linux Mint 19.3 systems that can not ping the Windows systems.

After posting the above question I set up a test network with a DD-WRT router and two laptops - one Windows and one Linux.

After reading forums and extensive testing the following setup seems to work except for the dig command output on the Linux system (more below) [this was resolved by attaching router to WAN].

I tried taking out some of the settings like in Additional Dnsmasq Options but dnsmasq will stop working and systems can't ping each other. I tried what some sites said is to put the router ip address into Static DNS 1 but that wouldn't work with any combination of settings.

DD-WRT version in test setup: v3.0-r44715 std (11/03/20)

With the above settings the Windows and Linux system can ping each other by ip address and by name. Nslookup looks normal on Windows - but the Linux dig command gets answered with a Refused. I don't know what to do about this or how important it is.