As the number is entered, the cage is dispelled, and Applejack rather un-majestically drops to the floor, the resulting thud snapping her awake. Swearing to give whoever is responsible an appointment with Bucky McGilliguddy and Kicks McGee, she nonetheless dusts herself off, and the four of you continue on up the mountain.
The going is slow, no thanks to the fact your stamina compared to Applejack's is terrible and unlike Twilight you can't fly, but you manage. I mean, if you didn't have any smarts then you're useless, frankly.
Suddenly, you hear a scream that unmistakably belongs to Rarity, and the four of you run towards the source. There, you are greeted by the sight of the formerly white unicorn now completely covered in some sort of black ooze. There doesn't appear to be any sort of fence stopping her from just leaving, but the fact that there doesn't seem to be any part of her that isn't caked in mud has sent the beauty and neat-obsessed pony into a rather hysteric screaming.
Apparently incapable of doing anything else, it looks like one of you is going to have to fetch her and give her a good wash. However, the only source of water nearby is a jug of water on a shelf right above Rarity's head, that can't be reached by hoof. And yes, after checking again, magic is entirely suppressed here. The only way you're going to get the jug down is to lower the shelf, which seems to be attached to a rail.
Unfortunately, to lower the rail, it needs to go down the fifty stops on the way before it reaches her. To make matters worse, it's rigged to (you guessed it) a puzzle. And judging by Applejack's glowing Cutie Mark next to it, Applejack, the...less educated mare of the current group, has to be the one to do it.
Using only four 4s, the control panel reads, can you make every number from 0 to 50? You may use the standard operators +, -, x, รท and (). In addition, you may concatenate digits, use decimal places, exponentiate, and use the factorial symbol !.
Twilight then has to take twenty minutes to explain to Applejack the fancy-mathematics muddying the issue before she can start. Fortunately, the puzzle seems to be solved by trial and error. The bad news is that Rarity appears to have more air in her lungs than any pony could have dreamed, and the longer it takes Applejack to solve this, the more at risk of going deaf all of you become. So please, help Applejack and save her poor eardrums.