On Fri, 6 Dec 2019 01:01:32 +0000, Roger Hayter wrote:

They held an examination for all applicant, each of whom was
provided with:

A sheet of blotting paper;
A rough sheet;
An answer paper and
A question paper.

At the top of the question paper it said "ALL WORKING MUST BE
SHOWN ON THE ANSWER PAPER".

At the end of the exam, every sheet of paper was collected
from each desk. If anything had been scribbled on any piece of
paper other than the answer paper, it was an instant fail.
The answer paper might have been 100% correct but it wan't
even marked.

Reason for failure? 'Cannot obey a simple instruction.'

That would make sense if they had said all working should be *confned*
to the answer paper. The instructions as you quote them do *not*
forbid doing rough working on the blotter and transcribing it in neater
writing to the answer paper.

Or even on the rough paper. B-)

Or workings trying out various methods to solve the problem before
transcribing all the workings of the choosen method to the answer
paper.

--
Cheers
Dave.