Mishna Berurah, end of siman 317:
הפותל חבלים חייב משום קושר והמפרידן ואינו מכוין לקלקל חייב משום מתיר [רמב”ם].
Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv would answer shei’los as they were asked, taking people literally, as though they meant the words they spoke exactly, and without adding any additional clarifications, and with no differentiation between ignoramuses and scholars.
There is a famous\infamous story about this.
Someone observed two Jews asking the rabbi the apparently identical question; about tying bread bag metal strip ties on Shabbos. To one he permitted it and to the second he forbade it.
The observer, shocked, asked why and wherefore the difference in response to the two questioners. Rabbi Elyashiv responded that both had demonstrated the twisting action with hand motions, the first questioner once, and the other twice. To the one who mindlessly showed the twisting motion twice he forbade, and to the one who mindlessly did so only once, he permitted…