Prof Orville Korkoff chuckled with glee as he collected the exams of the four students who had told him the ridiculous excuse about a tire blowing out on the way back from Florida, preventing them from getting back in time to take his exam. He knew it was a fabrication, but he had a brilliant plan to expose the students as liars and establish that it is folly to try to fool the old maestro. Korkoff was counting on this incident to earn him fame and immortality.  He was absolutely euphoric as he took the exams to his office to grade them.

Korkoff’ believed that no student excuse should be accepted without solid proof. He foiled the phony “grandfather’s-death-excuse” by sending a sympathy card to the student’s home. If the grandfather had died, then the student’s parents were impressed by Korkoff’s kindness; if the grandfather had not died, as was the case with many excuses, then the student was in trouble with his parents.

Now the names of these four students cannot be revealed because they are presently pillars of their community. One is today a famous investment broker who was sought by Merrill Lynch, E. F. Hutton, Edward Jones, and Smith Barney; he could have been the highest salaried CEO in the country, but he chose to go it alone.  Another student is a minister in the Malthusian Church of the Newly Redeemed. Another is a much-beloved physician in Central Illinois. The fourth is a high ranking Illinois senator in the United States Congress. You can see why discreetness is in order in telling this story. These four students have gone on after graduation to live distinguished lives of service to mankind.

In college, though, they wanted to have fun. They were gifted in intelligence, but they realized that all too soon they would be putting their nose to the grindstone, competing in that dog-eat dog world that America has become. So in their college days they were dedicated worshipers of Dionysius, knowing that Apollo was waiting in the near future.

Korkoff sat down to grade the exams of the four students. He had already graded the exams for the rest of the class. As he had expected, Honey Mustard was the only student who had earned an A. That was perfect, also, because Korkoff considered an exam successful if there was only one A in the class. Besides, Honey Mustard was his favorite student.

Korkoff was convinced that he had created the perfect trap for the four rascals who were trying to put one over on him. He sequestered them in different rooms to take the test, so there was no chance for them to cheat.  He had constructed a perfect multiple choice question: 101. Which tire?  a) the left front, b) the right front, c) the left rear, d) the right rear, e) none of the above.  The question did have a correct answer—e) none of the above—but the students couldn’t choose that answer without revealing that their excuse was phony. All Korkoff needed was for one answer to be different from the others and the plot would be exposed. It would be perfect if there were four different answers.

Korkoff graded the first paper. The student had missed one question and answered the last question as c) the left rear. The next paper also had one wrong and marked c as the answer. The same with the third student. Korkoff was beginning to worry just a bit. The last student, the one who was the senator from Illinois, had not missed a single question, and he had answered the last question by marking c) the left rear.  All four students had marked c as the answer, thus validating their excuse.

Most readers will wonder how the four students had managed to choose the same answer.  The four were in separate rooms, so they could not have communicated with each other. They were smart enough to know that they could not choose the right answer. So how did they all manage to identify the left rear tire as the answer when no tire had blown?

The answer is simple, so simple even a child could have known it. Throughout the academic world there is a rumor, promulgated no doubt by education departments, that if students do not know the correct answer for a multiple choice question, they should choose c. Some brilliant statistician probably devoted countless hours to arrive at that conclusion. A useless waste of time, some might say. But it saved four desperate students and forced Korkoff into the most shameful ignominy of his entire career: He had to award five A’s on one exam. Oh, the ignominy!

A janitor working late at night heard Korkoff scream, “HOISTED ON MY OWN PETARD!”

Dr. Logsdon is the much-loved English professor who has inspired students at Western Illinois University and Eureka College for many years. He lives in Eureka with his wife, Mary, and writes a weekly story for the Woodford County News Bulletin.