I'm a scientist. Well, sort of. That's how we test.
So... new folder by just any name? Now that sounds like a weird test. Bots don't even look in just any folder, do they?
Anyway, just to be thorough, I tested for root/robots.txt and root/new/robots.txt both with Allow and Disallow for everything, then tried fetching it with the Wemaster Tools Fetch. (One by one.) No change for 3 of these 4 tests.
With root/robots.txt on disallow, though, I got a "Denied by robots.txt" note instead of the usual "unreachable".