I noticed that "test -r file" returns success when called as root for a file with these permissions: "--w-------" (see also https://stackoverflow.com/q/71435657/6607497)
The documentation simply states: ‘-r FILE’ True if FILE exists and read permission is granted. Doing an strace it seems stat() is used to check the permissions (well, what about ACLs, just in case?) I think there should be a better explanatiomn how the permission tests work, especially when called as "root". (Report based on coreutils-8.32-150300.3.5.1 from openSUSE Leap 15.3)