Talk:Tic-tac-toe

opening moves

The opening move with the least number of drawing replies is in one of the corners. After this move has been made, the opener can force a win if the opponent takes any square other than the centre one, as shown in the above game.

I have removed this description just after the first example since it did not make much sense as to how it is "The opening move with the least number of drawing replies" and why is the next example not equivalent in that sense.

name of the article

Why is the article named "tic-tac-toe" instead of "noughts and crosses". The article itself states that not only do more english speaking countries call it noughts and crosses (only the US calls it tic-tac-toe), but also that noughts and crosses pre-dates tic-tac-toe as a name for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.44.93.25 (talk) 10:12, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Because the USA owns the internet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.110.229 (talk) 17:39, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

For what it is worth, google has 22 times as many hits for "tic tac toe" as for "noughts and crosses"..-- (talk) 19:18, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Variations

No mention is made to "Tres en Raya" as a variation. Also, the false assertion that "Tic-Tac-Toe" is called "Tres en Raya" in Spain is made. In fact, in Spain "Tic-Tac-Toe" as such is virtually unknown (I believe the vast majority of people in Spain would not even know how to play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe). "Tres en Raya" is a very different game, where each player only has three X's or O's. It is played with markers, not pencil and paper, and after the third move each player must move one of his three markers to another free square on the board. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.209.116.133 (talk) 21:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Moves player O "must" make???

"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."

To my way of thinking, both of these lead to an automatic loss for O. Am I missing something - I haven't deleted this excerpt from the page yet.

• If X leads corner and O follows with center - then X will play opposite corner and be guaranteed a fork next move.
• If X leads center and O follows with corner - then X will again play opposite corner and be guaranteed a fork next move.
• The only effective response to an X lead in center or corner is edge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.216.91.18 (talk) 02:51, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

In your first example, X is not garanteed a fork because O can go on any side forcing X to block it, passing up the fork.

In the second case, O can do the same by going in a third corner, again forcing X to go between the two O's to block it.

DAF (talk) 17:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually he is correct. It is impossible for O to win, unless X makes an illogical move. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.57.207.194 (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

26,830/765 or 23,129/827 ?

The current page says:

"the 765 essentially different positions (the state space complexity), or the 26,830 possible games [...]"

"while there are a total of 23,129 possible Tic-Tac-Toe games to be played in long train rides, the number of unique situations is in fact only 827", quoting Steve Schafer's 2002 "How many games of Tic-Tac-Toe are there?" The URL given is no longer valid (and I couldn't find it on www.archive.org), but I think it may be now at http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/Class/phi365/tic_tac_toe.html .

Whether it's 765 or 827 unique positions, surely it would be trivial to create a smallish lookup table to find the "next move" (after doing a search on rotations/translations) - what am I overlooking?

Mike Hamilton 12:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

See the discussion topic "Number of Unique Games". After sorting out a bug, my program agrees with the article's 765 games when taking account of symmetries. James Lednik (talk) 13:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Four draw positions

When I was doodling one day I established to myself that there are only four possible draw positions in tictactoe, including inversions and rotations of the four.

They are:

OXO OXO XOX XOO
XOX OXX OXX OXX
XOX XOO OXO XXO


Two questions. Is this relevent enough to include in the article, and more importantly, am I right?

No, there are only 3 - your third and fourth positions are the same except for a reflection - or is that not allowed? Incidentally your second game has more 0s than Xs, unlike the others. Ignoring symmetry but assuming X goes first, there are 16 possible draw positions (4 of first type 1, 4 of second type 2 and 8 of third/fourth type). --Henrygb 15:38, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Alternative names

I have removed most of the section Alternative names, as this is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. Here's the enitre paragraph as it looked before my edit:

Alternative names

Sometimes, the names of the games Tic-tac-toe (where players keep adding "pieces") and Three Men's Morris (where pieces start to move when the first four have been placed) are confused.

Niels Ø 13:35, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

And here we go again (sorry about special characters; see this edit):

--Noe (talk) 09:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I object to the synonym "rock paper scissors" in the lede. Deleted. No relation without citation ! Alanf777 (talk) 04:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Strategy

The strategy as described in the article does not guarantee a draw when used by player two, and fails to win against sub-optimal play in lines that result from an opening move in the corner of the board. Mikebell 04:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I find this too brief: Triangle: Make sure you are playing as a triangle, and the opponent as a star. That should be explained. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.201.218.72 (talk) 19:47, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

The bottom of the strategy section has problems, needs fixing. The bullet starting with "If X plays center" is followed by sub-bullet "If O takes center". But if X has played center, that option is no longer available to O. --Pekoebrew (talk) 23:40, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

mnk games

The mnk class of games and the fact that tic tac toe is an instance of that class should probably get a more substantial mention than in the intro paragraph to tic tac toe variations. (meta) As a Wikinoob, I don't know if this is the right forum to discuss opinions about content / direction of the article changes like this. Someone will have to correct me if this isn't how it's done. Mikebell 04:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Chickens

The article says that Las Vagas casinos have tic-tac-toe-playing chickens. Is that true? I didn't see any last time I was in Vegas. I have played tic-tac-toe agaisnt a chicken, but taht was 30 years ago at a county fair.

I have seen chickens that are presented as playing Tic Tac Toe at carnivals. There is a common cheat which is used. The chicken is trained to peck at a light, and has a Tic Tac Toe board in its pen which is mediated through a computer. It is actually the computer which is playing the game, and the chicken is just pecking at the Tic Tac Toe square which has a light illumninated by the computer. The chicken sees the light (you don't) and pecks at the square selected by the computer. Kmorford 03:16, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
• Sorry, that was a mistake - the chickens-at-casinos are in Atlantic City. DS 12:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Chaos and order

A great variant of Tic Tac Toe is a game called "chaos and order" (or is it "order and chaos"?) It is played on a six by six board with players alternating placing either a single X or a single O on the board at a time. The first player plays the part of order, and wants to get five in a row of either Xs or Os. The second player plays the part of chaos, and wants to completely fill the board with out having any instances of five in a row of either Xs or Os. Either player can play either an X or an O in any unfilled space on the board when it is his or her turn. With perfect play, I suspect that order can always win, but I do not know that with certainty. The game is complex enough that there are good opportunities to win for both sides. Kmorford 03:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Cat

Is there any explanation to why a game that is tied is said to have gone to the cat? 204.9.144.52 19:10, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The only reason I can think of is that tac spelled backward is cat. I have been unable to find any answer to this question.(74.60.0.215 22:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC))

horrible book @ first link position

I've removed the link to the Tic Tac Toe PDF book that was first in external links. That book is terrible. It makes several fundamental errors. How long was that link there? I shudder to think of all the players who have been misinformed by clicking that link. Yikes. 69.142.21.24 05:39, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Need more content

We need a history and geography of tic-tac-toe. Zaslav 11:40, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

CheckLines

Several months ago, I bought a copy of Tri-ang CheckLines through eBay. I may eventually get round to making a Wikipedia page about it. DFH 18:57, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Strip tic-tac-toe exists!

It was taken off as mistaken vandalism. Lies. Here are my sources which show that it clearly exists despite 16th century prudery:

So people need to relax, take a chill pill and get out more.

• The latter link is about a computer game with no evidence that it's ever played for real. The former one is a discussion board and seems completely irrelevant. And: "The game is usually played while drinking a bottle of absinth or smoking crack" looks like complete nonsense to me. - Mike Rosoft 08:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Errors

Wrong "example game" picture! "O" more than "X", but "X" starts!

Yes, someone should substitute a new picture -- there are 5 "O's" in the picture, which is impossible if "X" starts, which is the usual convention and that given in the article. Krakatoa 17:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Krakatoa,
Even I noticed the same error in the picture. This needs to be rectified as soon as possible. Any "WIKIPEDIAN", please do the needful at your earliest and oblige. Amit Munje (talk) 14:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Strategy error

I implemented the strategy as listed on this page and it failed. Here is the log. Note how after the first move of the AI there is no choice anymore. So the first move is wrong. It should be in the center. That means before point 5 or 6 (I believe it does not matter) there has to be inserted: "Get the middle field, if it is free". Having it at the bottom of that paragraph is not enough, since the above list is supposed to be a complete strategy. Here is the log:

Player starts.
x..
...
...

AI makes a move.
xo.
...
...

Player makes a move.
xo.
...
x..

AI makes a move.
xo.
o..
x..

Player makes a move.
xo.
o..
x.x

AI makes a move.
xo.
oo.
x.x

Player makes a move.
xo.
o..
xxx


--84.178.82.53 15:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Multidimensional Tic Tac Toe

I'm not sure if this should be included here, but Tic Tac Toe can be extrapolated to any number of dimensions by multiplying the number of boards by 3 each time. For example, normal 2 dimensional contains one board, 3D has 3 boards (already mentioned on the page), 4D (listed as 9 board tic tac toe here) contains 9 boards, 5D contains 27 boards, etc. While anything above 4D contains much more time writing out the boards than playing in my experience, it might be an interesting side note. The number of possible lines to win on an nth dimensional board, T(n) is 8T(n-1) - 15T(n-2) where T(0) = 0, T(1) = 1. Origin415 04:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Although there is a 4D game that can be played using 9 2D boards, the "9 board tic tac toe" described in this article is entirely different (and more interesting to play, I'd say). 75.36.182.157 01:25, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think it would be preferable to increase the size of the board by 1 for each increase in dimension. Otherwise the game becomes more trivial. So a 3d tic tac toe game should be on a 4x4x4 board and a 4d game should be a 5^4 grid etc. some sort of mathematical analysis would be helpful here. (which I am not providing) but needless to say with a 3x3x3 board it can be easily seen the first player to move can have a certain victory with an appropriate play and without any chance of the 2nd player stopping him.

I Jimmy Kerl wrote an early computer 4d game in the early 90s. I am not aware of any others that were available this early, but there are certainly many versions of computer 4d tic tac toe today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CD4B:4CE0:21D4:8C3B:3FDC:ACBC (talk) 03:15, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

History

Does anyone know the history behind the game? I believe it would be a wonderful addition to the article. Yurimxpxman 17:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Why is it called Tic-Tac-Toe in the US, no one has explained this. Naughts and Crosses it quite self-explanatory, Tic-Tac-Toe aint. Can any anyone add to the etymology of this phrase.

Names of X and O

While reading Hollywood Squares I was struck by the catchphrases "Circle takes square" and "X takes square". Am I to infer that in America, O is "circle" rather than "nought" ("zero") or "oh", and X is "ex" rather than "cross"? jnestorius(talk) 14:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

While X is generally said as "ex" in America, O is generally said as "oh". I have only heard O said as "circle" on Hollywood Squares.--RLent 19:59, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Boardgamegeek.com

It seems like this article should mention that tic-tac-toe holds the honor of the lowest rated game on boardgamegeek.com or at least it should have a link to its spot on boardgamegeek in the external links. --72.200.78.136 19:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

That really says more about boardgamegeek than about tic-tac-toe. — Gwalla | Talk 22:00, 1 June 2007 (UTC)