I have created a topic with only one responder and no gambits. Its keywords were both tried as [favorite movie] and (favourite movie)

the responder is:
u: (movie) Gladiator

The control script does not go this topic but another one. Patterns from the other one are recognized but not this topic.

Will I have to change the control script to find responders in all topics?

I dont think the control script needs to be changed. But you haven’t described what happened in enough detail.
You have a topic with keywords “movie” and “favorite”.  You say the system went to patterns in some other topic. Did this other topic also have “movie” as a keyword? What was your input sentence and what pattern reacted from what topic. CS does not guarantee your input goes to this topic. It finds the set of topics that it might go to and tries them until one of them matches. It sounds like some other topic was equally likely. If both topics matched the same number of keywords from the input, then there is no priority in picking (unless a topic has had its priority adjusted via a topic flag).

I should add that I just tried building and running the Harry bot and nothing was gambiting. There may be a glitch in the software. Or I might have screwed up the script. I have memory issues and have not worked with CS for a while.

Also, am I correct in assuming that the original control script switches topics only if it found a matching keyword between the topic keywords and the input string?

Works for me.

Step 1:  erase the contents (not the folder) of TOPICS and USERS
Step 2: Run CS and type :build harry
see what happens. If that fails, download the current version from scratch and see if harry runs right out of the box.

thanks erasing and rebuilding worked. I need to get back in the groove here. I was at a point where I was dealing with POS elements of input but now recall little. Thats what anticonvulsants do to your brain. I’ll start rereading the documentation again and try not to bug you for a while. Thanks for your quick responses.

Its like windows OS. When things are inexplicably wrong, first step is reboot Windows.