I can run Wary 5.3 happily from USB stick - I used universal installer from a CD - if I don't input any boot parameters. But I haven't been able to use any boot parameters at all, so far! The big guys usually quote "Boot: puppy pfix=ram ...(etc.) " So I tried:-

Boot: puppy ... produces 'could not find kernel image ..'
(Lots of other likely names were not recognized, except for:
Boot: vmlinuz ... vmlinuz goes to "...ready" but produces kernel panic and freezes. )

Is this a 'known thing' or did I do something wrong?

You need to install grub4dos in place of syslinux bootloader to get puppy boot cheat codes to work.
Just point the grub4dos install to the pendrive.
Your boot screen will change and you will have more options.

The bootloader you are using is outside of puppys boot cheat code control.

I tried Grub4dos rather timidly - there are a lot of options, I thought I might get an oopsie! But I'm now using that same newly-changed USB stick successfully, to say thank you.

I haven't worked out how to use parameters with it yet, but I'd better mark this Q as solved. It looks hopeful but I'm a SLOW learner!

I'm sure I'm not the only "slow learner" out there!! When I was working, once or twice I had to make "how-to" docs. I had problems until I got some "feedback" - some inexperienced "guinea-pigs" to read my efforts and tell me what they could or couldn't understand. I wonder if there's anything like that in the LinuxQuestions world?

All I can say is post to your blog here to document your steps.
Members here read em when time allows.

You can mark this thread as solved using thread tools above your 1st post.
Glad it worked out for you.