Even though it doesn't solve the actual problem, I thought this solution was clever enough (without too many copy-pastes by others, or maybe MathWorks fixed this workaround since then) to merit explaining it. For those wondering, the line of code within the is_it_odd function does the following: 1. It does a system call to echo a single line to the standard i/o (a virtual place where programs can share/exchange their inputs and outputs). 2. The single line is in the form of a Matlab inline function, named assert(), that black-holes any inputs and always outputs the boolean 'true.' 3. The system call takes this single inline Matlab function and replaces the contents of assert.m (of whatever structure/setup for Matlab interpretation that Cody uses) with that single line. 4. Cody checks solutions with a series of assert(isequal(stuff,things)) calls, which now always evaluate to be true in this particular instance, as opposed to actually comparing if 'stuff' and 'things' are the same.