I'm afraid ikegami is right on this one. For me, the magic of modes is one of the most confusing areas in *nix.

jth@reina:~/tmp/t$ ls -l
total 8
dr--r--r-- 2 jth jth 4096 2008-09-26 06:42 r
d--x--x--x 2 jth jth 4096 2008-09-26 06:42 x

jth@reina:~/tmp/t$ ls r
ls: cannot access r/file: Permission denied
file

jth@reina:~/tmp/t$ ls x
ls: cannot open directory x: Permission denied

jth@reina:~/tmp/t$ cat r/file
cat: r/file: Permission denied

jth@reina:~/tmp/t$ cat x/file
contents of x/file
[download]

As you can see, r lets me list the file with ls (read the directory) but not access the file while x lets me access the file ("search") but not list the directory.

Don't feel too bad, I've been messing with modes for about 15 years and I still had to test to see who was right. Besides, you are completely correct when you say that one would almost always want rx on a directory.