At some point I would like to write up a story about this team in my University Object-Oriented Programming class who decided to use 1-based 1ndexes in Java while making a 2-D array for a board game.

I don't want to spoil it, but the following picture of a how they stored a 3x3 tic-tac-toe board is a hint:

  [ null, null, null, null, null, null,

  null, X, 0, X, null, null,

  null, null, O, X, X, null, 

  null, null, null, X, 0, 0 ]