Master Code

Some recent labs with Jeroo made me think about something. Lately, i've been plowing through the labs, and of course they've been getting progressively harder to solve. My initial instinct for any problem is to create a master solution, a code that would complete the task even if the details of the situation are changed. Intuitively, this seems to be the most practical way of doing things, but is there ever a point at which this is unnecessary? I mean, I could easily just hammer out a set of instructions that would complete the task and probably still earn credit for doing so. I can imagine that my teacher would advise against this, for obvious reasons. As a learning programmer, I want to improve on my problem-solving skills, and I guess the path to doing so is based on challenging myself.