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The question "how do you brew the perfect cup of tea" has plagued humanity for centuries. The right leaves are required, working out how long the leaves should be steeped is an art, and additives are questioned and dismissed with impunity.

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Escape Academy takes this question to new heights by turning it into a fiendish puzzle that has you using high-tech lab equipment, operating a chainsaw, and playing with butterflies. This level is an actual breather level, with the stakes being the enjoyment of a nice cuppa. You have 25 minutes to impress Professor Bonilla and make the perfect cup of tea.

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Objective

How To Get Inside The Shed

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Love Blooms Puzzle and Shovel

As has been a running theme in Escape Academy thus far, you're confronted with a series of locked doors to contend with. The first of these is a simple combination lock preventing you from entering the garden shed to the left of the level.

A single clue awaits you: a sign that reads 'Love Blooms Here.' To the left of the sign, stuck into the dirt, is a Garden Shovel. Pick it up.

On the opposite side of the garden, in the section with the swarm of bees, are two garden beds that you can dig up with the shovel. Do so, and pick up the Sereni-Tea Seed and the Professor's Necklace.

To figure out the combination lock's code, first examine the tree in the center of the garden. One side has a heart carved into it with two initials: 'A. B.' With the love-themed hint, you can bet that this is the first half of the code. Find the second half by examining the Professor's Necklace - it is half a heart with K. Z. on it.

The combination lock's code is ABKZ.

How To Get Into The Labs

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Overgrowth

The next part of this level requires that you find some way to bypass the overgrowth blocking you from entering either of the labs at the ends of the garden. A sign hints that you'll need to use 'The Beast' but offers no clue as to what this is. Luckily, you'll find The Beast inside the shed you just unlocked.

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Mugs and Tools Puzzle

Inside the shed, you'll find a cabinet of organized drinking receptacles opposite a wall of tools. Note the order and the amount of teacups and mugs inside the cabinet: one gray teacup, two red mugs, two blue mugs, two more red mugs, and a final gray teacup.

Interacting with the wall of tools lets you rearrange them. Clicking one tool will let you swap it with another. Do so in a way that matches the cabinet of cups and mugs: a gray spanner, two red paintbrushes in a row, two blue wrenches in a row, another two red paintbrushes, and then the other gray spanner at the end.

When the correct order is used, a panel will reveal The Beast (Fueled) - it's a chainsaw.

While you're here in the shed, examine the box in the middle and pick up the four Strange Tiles. We'll use them in a puzzle in a little while.

With The Beast in your possession, cut down the overgrowth in front of one of the lab doors. It doesn't matter which one you choose first.

How To Refuel The Chainsaw

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Strange Tile puzzle

Unfortunately, The Beast only has enough fuel to cut down one set of overgrowth, so we'll need to find a way to refuel it.

Head to the cagelike cabinet in the section of the garden with the bees. Examine the panel on the front to find a puzzle about inheritance with four missing tiles - this is where you'll use the Strange Tiles you found earlier.

Each tile is made up of two things: a shape and a color. These shapes and colors and inherited from the two parent tiles above.

The solution to this puzzle is as follows:

  • Place the solitary blue tile in the bottommost slot.
  • Place the black and white sunflower tile in the one directly above the blue tile you just placed.
  • Place the green sunflower tile in the slot above the black and white sunflower.
  • Place the final green tile in the remaining slot.

With that done, interact with the bottle of gas in the upper-right of the cabinet and select the empty chainsaw to refuel it. With The Beast (Fueled) once more, cut down the remaining undergrowth.

While you're here, pick up one of the Propane Tanks on the bottom shelf.

How To Get The Sereni-Tea Leaves

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Seed Lab

You have a Sereni-Tea Seed, but that's no good for making tea - you need leaves. Head to the lab nearest the shed - we'll call this the seed lab.

Inside, you'll find a fully grown Sereni-Tea plant, but it is locked inside some lab equipment. To obtain it, you'll need to find a six-letter code to input in the machine below the plant.

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Seed Wight Puzzle

The first half of the code is dictated by the seed's weight. Use the set of scales at the back of the room to weigh the Sereni-Tea Seed and find out that it weighs 0.23g. Now, examine the Seed Weight Analysis chart near the lab door to see that 0.23g is marked with the code GTT-. The fact that the dash comes after this shows us that GTT is, indeed, the first half of the code, not the second.

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Seed Chloroplast Puzzle

To find out what the second half of the code is, examine the posters on the right-hand side of the wall. Here, you'll find that the second half of a seed's code is dictated by how many chloroplasts you'll find in the seed's cells, and the poster on the right shows you what a chloroplast looks like. Look at the seed under the microscope on the table in the center of the lab and count the chloroplasts: there are eight of them, corresponding to -TAG.

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Sereni-Tea Leaves

Head to the Sereni-Tea Plant and enter the code GTT-TAG into the machine. Now you can pick up the Tea Leaves.

How To Deal With The Bees

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Flower Puzzle

While it's all well and good that you've obtained the Tea Leaves, you also need water to make tea, and the tap doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Unfortunately, the water controls are being guarded by angry bees that refuse to let you past.

The key to this puzzle lies in the butterfly lab near the bees. Here, you'll need to arrange the flowers behind the window in the correct order to make the butterflies land on them. Then, you can use the butterflies' colors to work out a code that you can input to open the cabinet on the right.

There's a note on the left that tells you the rules for the flower order. Interact with it, and you'll pick it up, letting you Pin it to your screen for ease of use.

  • Flowers A, B, and E don't need a lot of light, so you know that the first two flowers must be C and D. Flower C must be the second closest to the right, so the first two flowers must be D, followed by C.
  • The blue potted plant has to be to the immediate left of the red flowers, meaning that B has to come before E.
  • Flower A has to come in between two flowers and not be on one end. If B and E are together, A must fall in between C and B.

The order is as follows: Flower D, Flower C, Flower A, Flower B, and then Flower E. When they are arranged as such, colored butterflies will rest on them as follows:

Butterfly

Blue

Red

Green

Purple

Yellow

Flower

D

C

A

B

E

With this worked out, we can enter the code in the orange cabinet. Using the code underneath, we know that the colored code corresponds to the butterflies that landed on the flowers outlined in the sentence. This means you should press the following buttons in order: Purple Butterfly, Green Butterfly, Blue Butterfly, Purple Butterfly, Yellow Butterfly, Yellow Butterfly.

The cabinet will open. Pick up the Bee-B-Gone and use it on the bees. Spin the valve there to turn on the water!

How To Brew The Perfect Cup Of Tea

Escape Academy The Tea Kettle Tea Bench

Head back to the bench in the middle of the garden. Use the Propane Tank to replace the empty one underneath the bench, turn on the water at the top to fill the kettle, and then place the Tea Leaves in the kettle to finish the job. Et voila!

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