I've come to the retrospective conclusion decades after educational abuse that professors like this are more interested in showboating their mathematics knowledge than drive students to find good pragmatic solutions.
i.e. I know this super complex answer in which is it happens to be the only purely accurate thing. Can you guess it? vs what I would like to see which is: here are the foundational concepts, bring them all together and arrive at the naturally correct conclusion demonstrating your knowledge and understanding