Life Outside The Cave

While Twilight sat comatose in the kitchen Spike walked over to the shelves in the children's or I suppose, the foal’s section of the library and began to search, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Monopoly, Twister, Candy Land, Connect Four and, Scrabble were all here plus a version of what looked like Battleship called ‘Cloud Bucker’.

“Want to play this one?” asked Spike holding up the Battleship clone.
“I would play anything here that isn't Candy Land.” I answered with a smile, we walked over to the reading table in the middle of the library and unpacked the game board.
Taking a cursory glance at the rules it was quickly apparent that the rules made the game exactly the same as Battleship, each player had 5 pieces and a grid to place them on, there were red pegs shaped like birds for hits and white pegs for misses, the names of the pieces were different however, The largest cloud shaped piece was called a Cumulonimbus the next largest was called a Cumulus and so on.

“Hey Spike, why are all the pieces named after clouds?” I questioned, these long names didn't seem beneficial to a game designed for an early entry level.
“Apparently it was originally designed to help educate the Pegasi foal’s about different types of clouds.” He explained, I wasn't too sure how successful that would be, apart from the sizes of the pieces they looked identical.

The board was set up now, I had my pieces spread out around the outside on the board with my two largest pieces touching one another at 90 degrees in a corner.

I won the game, Spike’s strategy seemed to be just picking places at random till he got a hit and then searching near there till he finished bucking what he was aiming for.

By the end of the first game this is what the board looked like.

“Hey Spike, How come you only shoot at random?” I questioned.
“Shoot? You mean buck don’t you?” he rebuffed with a confused look on his face, after replying the affirmative he stated, “How else will I figure out where you are?”
“Look at how I've been playing, what do you see?” I inquired.
“Well you made a diagonal box in the middle.” he pointed out.
“There are two things I did that are obvious” I elucidated, “The first is I targeted the center of the board first, because of the shape of the Cumulonimbus it’s very likely at least one part of it will be near there, I got lucky and you happened to have lots of pieces near there.”
“Huh, I never noticed that.” Spike stated, “What about how you were going like a checkerboard, if you were trying to figure out where in the middle I was why only buck half the squares?”
“That’s my second point, what’s the size of the smallest piece?” I questioned.
“Two spaces, easy.” He replied instantly.
“Exactly, and seeing how the smallest piece is two spaces large I don't need to check every space just every other space, until I get a hit.”
Spike looked excited but for what reason I couldn't discern, that was until he spoke up.
“I’m going to beat you now Twilight, I know your trick!” He yelled excitedly.

It was at this exact moment my hostess decided to enter the room, Kindle floating behind her.
“What trick?” Twilight asked.
“We were just playing Batt … Cloud Bucker and I gave Spike some strategy advice.” I replied stumbling over the name.
“There was never any trick there, just probability and math, anyway why are there even more books on this than you said there were?” she interrogated gesturing towards the Kindle.
“Wait more books.” I repeated, “I said there were three-thousand five-hundred, how many books are there?”
“I counted them all out and there's about six-thousand six-hundred.”
‘That's … really weird where could an extra three-thousand two-hundred books come from, unless.’
“Twilight what base of mathematics does Equestria use?” I queried.
“Base eight for everyday use of course, what does that have to … Oh.” Twilight finished with a burst of realization.
“Yeah my species uses base ten because of the fact we have ten fingers.” I said wiggling them for emphasis, “Why would ponies use base eight.” I asked confused.
She replied quickly, “Foals learn math by counting on their legs, if the knee is bent it's a two and if its straight its a one.”
“Huh, interesting.” I replied, this was going to get very annoying and confusing.

Just then came a knocking at the door, Twilight cantered over to answer it.