Numberposts 1 not cooperating in 3.5

What do you mean by “isn’t liking what I’m doing for some reason.”?
What happens? Does it break or just not return the amount you expected? Is the second query working?

As for the trick of stripping shortcodes it’s just as easy as:

<?php echo strip_shortcodes( get_the_content() ); ?>

error code: 523