Stripping away the challenge

Most of the challenge of this episode comes from the mental challenge stemming from deciphering the clues found in the previous episode. This section will cover the logic behind the clues. For those of you who want to figure out how to do it on your own, you may want to skip this section until after you have solved the episode.

The professors favorite color is the color right at the edge of the human visible spectrum before the spectrum becomes "ultra." The colors that humans can see is only a small part of the light spectrum. Below the visible red spectrum is the infra-red. Above the color violet is the ultra-violet spectrum. This means that the professors favorite color is violet. This corresponds to the number 7.

The loneliest number when it is beside itself is the professors favorite number. One is the loneliest number. One beside itself therefore is 11.

The professors favorite letter is a significant letter to programmers. In fact, many of your programming languages are modeled after it. This language became object oriented when ++ was added to it's name. Of course this language is the C programming language. This means that the professors favorite letter is C.

The clue for the first lock is the professors number and letter must be combined with the portions adding to two less than my favorite number. This is simply a total of (11-2) portions. The portion of the letter is half that of the number. This means that 2L + N = 9. Therefore the proportions of chemicals should be 3 of the letter (C) and 6 of the number (11).

The second mix is made up of the prefessors letter (C) and color (violet). The letter has parts equal to its spot. It is the third letter of the alphabet meaning it has 3 portions. The color is the floor of half the letter squared. the floor of a number is the number rounded down to the nearest integer. 3x3 /2=4.5 so there should be 4 portions of the color.

The final mix has the clue "One part each of the missing of the first two." The component not in the first lock is the color (violet). The component not in the second lock is the number (11). One part of each is simple enough.