Searching with Lies and Shrugs

Identifying an Unseen Animal from a Fixed Checklist When the Witness May Err

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions and the School of Continuous Improvement treats the questioning of a witness to a venomous animal from a printed checklist as a search game in which the witness may answer wrongly a bounded number of times and may say they did not see. It proves that the animal can be identified exactly when every two animals on the checklist differ in more features than went unseen, bounds the number of questions needed from above and below, and works an eight-animal checklist through by hand.

@misc{slop_ffzczm,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma and Solveig Adeyemi},
  title        = {Searching with Lies and Shrugs: Identifying an Unseen Animal from a Fixed Checklist When the Witness May Err},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.ffzczm},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-searching-with-lies-ffzczm/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}