Players characters evading direct questions

[Unoriginal]

I think there's a second alternative: the players are disassociated from the game. They don't care about the plot, they don't care about the werewolves or the fey, they don't want to parse the difference between 'caer' and 'caern', they just want to hit something with a stick.

I don't disagree that it could be the reason why they forgot, but I don't think it's different from the "they had forgotten" alternative.

If they just wanted to hit something with a stick and remembered Information A, answering Question 1 would have been the quickest path.