Legend: Faced with a two-page exam he cannot complete, an unprepared student hands in only the first page, then quickly leaves the room, looks up the remaining answers, completes the second page, drops it on the floor at the back of the classroom after the period is over, and waits for someone to find it and turn it in.
Example: [Dale, 1978]
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[Another way of cheating] is to hand in the answers you can do, take the other part of the paper away and complete it as quickly as possible, then slip it on the floor at the back of the class and wait for it to be found and handed in.
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Variations:
- In some versions the deceptive student recruits a friend who has a class in the same room later in the day to hand in the test paper and claim that he found it on the floor.
Origins: This tale (which dates to at least the 1950s) is a more plausible version
Book of Daze legend, both of which deal with a student who evades test questions he can't answer through the ruse of pretending that part of his exam paper was misplaced. Similar legends include
Mother Knows Test.
Last updated: 22 March 2007
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Sources:
- Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Mexican Pet.
- New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. ISBN 0-393-30542-2 (p. 196).
- Girdler, Lou. "The Legend of the Second Blue Book."
- Western Folklore. Issue 29 [1970] (pp. 111-113).
- Jeakle, Bill and Ed Wyatt. How to College in the 90s.
- New York: New American Library, 1989. ISBN 0-452-26298-4 (p. 83).
Also told in:
- Dale, Rodney. The Tumour in the Whale.
- London: Duckworth, 1978. ISBN 0-7156-1314-6 (p. 45).
-
The Big Book of Urban Legends.
- New York: Paradox Press, 1994. ISBN 1-56389-165-4 (p. 208).
