This question is going to sound more CS'y because that is my background. It also might be a bit vague but that is because I am not sure what the right thought process is in how to formulate it. I think there are a huge number of simple alterations to this problem that lead to somewhat interesting results. So say I want to understand all of the space around the problem including the simple alterations to the problem, what kind of thought process could I use in both formulating the problem as well as solving it.
Say you have this line of thinking:
I have a notebook with some pages that are written and some that are not written on and my goal is to find a specific page of writing. All I know is that there are some adjacent pages that have writing on it about similar things.
Assume that determining if two pages are similar takes constant time and determining if you have reached the right page takes constant time and changing to any other page takes constant time.
What if you don't know how big the notebook is? What if you can approximate sizes such as the size of the notebook, the size of pages before and after your position.
What if you can only approximate the number of pages for the next flip?
What is the optimal strategy of picking the next page to flip to assuming that the strategy can include a memory of previous pages.