This seems to severely punish those who would even attempt to follow the rules. I've had instances where I can't find the answer to a problem and will spend hours hunting it down. If I had a professor give me a problem with that constraint, I'd probably scour a book for hours. What are you other options? Put "I don't know."?

Seems like this just forces everyone to the same result: those who break the rules will and save themselves time, those that try and follow the rules will probably break after hours, and end up googling anyways.

Maybe I'm missing something but this seems totally absurd.