Sadly true, which leads to a conundrum when trying to get inside the test-giver's head: did the test-giver notice this intricacy of the question and therefore I should give the clever answer, or did they not realise and therefore I should give the naive answer?

In this particular instance, my son and his friend were unable to convince their teacher that the test/quiz was flawed, so the naive answer was the "right" one to win the teacher's approval.