I'd probably hire someone based on c) but not because they were promoted, but rather because their strategy shows they know how to solve real life problems creatively rather than have a bunch of test answers memorized, and because as pointed out at the end of the article, the person couldn't just mindlessly copy/paste, they had to understand the question find a relevant answer, digest it, understand both the question and the answer, and respond. That's more or less how many things work in real life (otherwise we can all stop going to StackOverflow now).