I pointed out the failure seemed specific to wordpress.org. They said it was working fine for other sites until I provided screen shots to refute it.
Given multiple domains with the same problem, it seemed to be centered around a block from the provider. I explained in detail it had to be a network appliance on their end. They fixed it, but never shared how.
THX Sunrader for the extra ammo! 😉
THX for the tip, Sunrader! Consistent with all the posts about this issue, I turned a ticket in to my shared hosting provider, mentioning that a proxy update could cause an unexpected block. This happens with all the WP sites I have and is recent. Seems like everything I try to connect to WP is blocked. Trying your suggestion yielded the below error, which strengthens the theory of a network appliance issue:
Downloading update from https://downloads.wordpress.org/release/wordpress-3.9.2-no-content.zip…
Download failed.: Failed to connect to downloads.wordpress.org port 443: Connection timed out
Installation Failed
