I still like the instantaneousness of Launchy--FARR takes slightly longer to load results. But I do love the assortment of plugins and the lean memory footprint, which is why I've officially retired Launchy.
The "kk `" options don't work for me either. E.g. if I type "kk `p" (without quotes) I get no results (unless "`p" was copied in my clipboard, of course).