Mind bending philosophy dilemmas in multiple choice tests.

[Sam Brown]

That's got to be the weirdest sentence I've ever written in the 
subject line, but I digress...

Today I had my Film History exam (and what a pleasant experience it 
was, but that's another story!), and part of the exam was multiple 
choice. 'Oh, multiple choice, well that's never too bad,' I hear you 
saying. Well, no! This multiple choice exam was really tricky! Not 
because of its content, but because of a number of questions that 
were all phrased in an unusual way. For example...

Q: Which of the following is NOT true for a particular film?
A) An option which may or may not be true.
B) Another option which may or may not be true. 
C) A third option which may or may not be true.
D) All of the above are true.

As my Film History friends (there's five or six of us) and I emerged 
from the exam, we all admitted to having been stumped by this 
question, because we all agreed that it's impossible to answer. If, 
for example, option A is the correct answer (ie, C is not true of a 
particular film) then doesn't this mean that D is also a correct 
answer, ie, all of the above are NOT true, according to the nature of 
the question? The only way it can make sense is if D is the correct 
answer (which, for at least one of the questions, we're sure it 
wasn't).

Confused yet? We certainly were... we tied our minds up in knots 
trying to figure out if this was a valid multiple choice question. In 
the end we just gave up, citing confusion as our reason. 

So, my point is: is this is a valid multiple choice question? What do 
the rest of you make of this question? A gold star goes to anyone who 
can sort this whole mess out for me!

Sam