Can’t say why the above doesn’t work, but as a work-around you should be able to achieve the same by editing the (hidden) properties for the query block with an external editor.
E.g.:
- {{query (property type abbreviation)}}
query-table:: true
query-sort-by:: updated-at
query-sort-desc:: true
(I have noted that if query-sort-desc::
isn’t given as well, no sorting at all will be done, in either direction.)