Tic-tac-toe, also called noughts and crosses, hugs and kisses, and many other names, is a pen-and-paper game for two players, O and X, who take turns to mark the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The player who succeeds in placing three of their own marks in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row wins the game.
This game is won by the first player, X:
This is a "cat's game", that is, it is drawn:
Players soon discover that best play leads to a draw, regardless of where the first player plays. So tic-tac-toe is most often played by very young children; when they have discovered an unbeatable strategy they move on to more sophisticated games such as dots and boxes[citation needed]. This reputation for ease has led to casinos offering gamblers the chance to play tic-tac-toe against trained chickens [1], [2].
The simplicity of tic-tac-toe makes it ideal as a pedagogical tool for teaching the concepts of Combinatorial game theory and the branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the searching of game trees. It is straightforward to write a computer program to play tic-tac-toe perfectly, to enumerate the 765 essentially different positions (the state space complexity), or the 26,830 possible games (the game tree complexity) on this space. Ignoring symmetry, there are 255,168 possible games.
The first known computer game, OXO (or Noughts and Crosses, 1952) for the EDSAC computer played perfect games of tic-tac-toe against a human opponent.
One example of a Tic-Tac-Toe playing computer is the Tinkertoy computer, developed by MIT students, and made out of Tinker Toys. It only plays Tic-Tac-Toe, and has never lost a game. It is currently on display at the Museum of Science, Boston.
Strategy
To win or avoid losing in tic-tac-toe requires that the player consistently perform as many of the following actions as possible with each mark — listed in order of priority — without sacrificing the higher priorities:
- Complete three in a row.
- Block their opponent from completing three in a row.
- Threaten a win with two possible completions in two rows.
- Avoid a configuration in which the opponent can force the win.
- Threaten a win with a possible completion (two in a row).
- Prevent the opponent from getting two in a row.
To be successful, the player must seek to complete as many of these objectives as possible with a single mark, without sacrificing higher priorities. The player must also think ahead to see whether a mark can be made this turn that will allow him or her to achieve a higher priority in the next turn.
The game is won or drawn after the first two marks are made, assuming perfect play for the remainder of the game. It is therefore very important for the serious tic-tac-toe player to study these openings (of which there are 12) in order to avoid making a mark that enables the opponent to force a win, or to recognize marks that can be capitalized upon in order to force the win.
The first player, whom we shall designate "X," has 3 possible positions to mark during the first turn. Superficially, it might seem that there are 9 possible positions, corresponding to the 9 squares in the grid. However, by rotating the board, we will find that in the first turn, every corner mark is strategically equivalent to every other corner mark. The same is true of every edge mark. For strategy purposes, there are therefore only three possible first marks: corner, edge, or center. Player X can win or force a draw from any of these starting marks. The choice of which to make will depend on the player's knowledge of their opponent's weaknesses in recognizing good answers to a particular opening. In a series of games, alternating the opening mark and its superficial position can help a player win more often against a weaker player.
The second player, whom we shall designate "O," must respond to X's opening mark in such a way as to avoid the forced win. Player O must always respond to a corner opening with a center mark, and to a center opening with a corner mark. An edge opening must be answered either with a center mark, a corner mark next to the X, or an edge mark opposite the X. Any other responses will allow X to force the win. Once the opening is completed, O's task is to follow the above list of priorities in order to force the draw, or else to gain a win if X makes a weak play.
Possibly the most famous appearance of the game is in the cult 1980s film WarGames, where tic-tac-toe is used as an allegory for nuclear war. Matthew Broderick's character makes the missile defense computer WOPR play against itself. As each game ends in a draw, WOPR makes the association between the two and declares that "The only winning move is not to play."
Variations
Many board games share the element of trying to be the first to get n-in-a-row: three men's morris, nine men's morris, pente, gomoku, Connect Four, Quarto, Gobblet. The m,n,k-games are a family of generalized games based on tic-tac-toe.
- 3-dimensional tic-tac-toe on a 3×3×3 board, though the first player has an easy win by playing in the centre. Another variant is played on a 4×4×4 board though it was solved by Victor Allis in 1994 (the first player can force a win). A more complex variant can be played on boards utilising higher dimensional space, most commonly 4 dimensions in a 3×3×3×3 board. In such games the aim is to fill up the board and get more rows of three in total than the other player.
- In misère tic-tac-toe you win if the other player gets n in a row. The 3×3 game is a draw.
- In nine board tic-tac-toe nine tic-tac-toe boards are themselves arranged in a 3×3 grid. The first player's move may go on any board; all moves afterwards are placed in the empty spaces on the board corresponding to the square of the previous move (that is, if a move were in the upper-left square of a board, the next move would take place on the upper-left board). If a player can't move because the indicated board is full, the next move may go on any board. Victory is attained by getting 3 in a row on any board. This makes the game considerably longer and more involved than tic-tac-toe, with a definite opening, middle game and endgame.
- In Tic-Tac-Chess, players play a game of chess and tic-tac-toe simultaneously. When a player captures an opponent's piece, the player can make a play on the tic-tac-toe board regardless if the other player has not yet made a play. The first person to get 3 X's or O's in a row wins the game. This makes for a much more defensive game of chess.
- There is a game which is isomorphic to tic-tac-toe, but on the surface appears completely different. Players take it in turn to say a number between one and nine. A particular number may not be repeated. Both players aim to say three numbers which add up to 15. Plotting these numbers on a 3×3 magic square will reveal the exact correspondence with the game of tic-tac-toe, given that three numbers will be arranged in a straight line if and only if they add up to 15.
- Two players fill out a 3 x 3 grid with numbers one through nine in order of priority. They then compare their grids and play tic-tac-toe by filling in the squares by the priority they listed before.
- In the 1970s, there was a two player game made by Tri-ang Toys & Games called Check Lines, in which the board consisted of eleven holes arranged in a geometrical pattern of twelve straight lines each containing three of the holes. Each player had exactly five tokens and played in turn placing one token in any of the holes. The winner was the first player whose tokens were arranged in two lines of three (which by definition were intersecting lines). If neither player had won by the tenth turn, subsequent turns consisted of moving one of one's own tokens to the remaining empty hole, with the constraint that this move could only be from an adjacent hole.
- Toss Across is a tic-tac-toe game where players throw bean bags at a large board to mark squares.
- Various game shows have been based around the game:
- Hollywood Squares is better known as celebrity tic-tac-toe.
- Secret "X" contestants play tic-tac-toe "Price is Right-Style" with Xs only.
- In Tic-Tac-Dough players put symbols up on the board by answering questions.
- In Beat the Teacher contestants answer questions to win a turn to influence a tic-tac-toe grid.
- The object of the fictional D'ni game of Gemedet is to get six balls in-a-row in a 9x9x9 cube grid.
- Some children play where getting a Y formation also counts as a win.
Alternative names
In the English-speaking world, the game has a number of alternative names.
- Tic-tac-toe, tick-tat-toe, or tit-tat-toe (English - USA)
- Noughts and crosses or naughts and crosses (English - United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand)
- X's and O's (English - Ireland)
- X-e O-zees- (Northern Ireland)
- Boxin' OXen (Southern Ireland)
Sometimes, the names of the games Tic-tac-toe (where players keep adding "pieces") and Three Men's Morris (where pieces start to move after a certain number have been placed) are confused.
References
External links
- Wolfram's MathWorld
- Ostermiller.org Tic-Tac-Toe strategy guide
- Ostermiller.org playable Tic-Tac-Toe
- 4d Tic-Tac-Toe
- dorkzilla.org playable tic-tac-toe
- Goobix.com Online Tic-Tac-Toe Game
- TicTacToe and TicTacToe3D for mobile phones (freeware)
- Simple Java based Tic Tac Toe
- Java version of nine board tic-Tac-Toe
- Flash-based version of Tic-Tac-Toe
- Tic-Tac-Toe at KidsBuilder.com
- How many Tic-Tac-Toe games are possible?
- Tic-Tac-Toe for Palm OS Handhelds
- ChessandPoker.com step-by-step strategy guide for both players
- PDF of "How to Win at Tic-Tac-Toe"
- Play Tic-Tac-Toe on DVD
- Paul Nahay's "Mega Tic-Tac-Toe", a Java applet and application that plays differenct variants, including Connect Four and Gomoku.