Since phpbb's website says not to post it on their forum, I guess I'll post my findings here.

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/search.php?search_author=\*\'fnfnfffffa,' \*\*\cdf


or

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/search.php?search_author=\*\*\*\*\*\*\ *\*\*\

It seems it has something to do with the the \'s *'s and length. I am not sure if this is a big bug but I decided to try that after looking at search.php
************************************************

	$search_author = str_replace('*', '%', trim($search_author));
				
				$sql = "SELECT user_id
					FROM " . USERS_TABLE . "
					WHERE username LIKE '" . str_replace("\'", "''", $search_author) . "'";
				if ( !($result = $db->sql_query($sql)) )
				{
					message_die(GENERAL_ERROR, "Couldn't obtain list of matching users (searching for: $search_author)", "", __LINE__, __FILE__, $sql);
				}
*********************************************

Not sure if this is anything, but it seems to be running in the sql and erroring.

Thanks for your time,
jtm