Tic-tac-toe variants
| eat | bee | less | →e | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| air | bits | lip | →i | |
| soda | book | lot | →o | |
| ↙ s |
↓ a |
↓ b |
↓ l |
↘ t |
Tic-tac-toe is an instance of an m,n,k-game, where two players alternate taking turns on an m×n board until one of them gets k in a row.Harary's generalized tic-tac-toe is an even broader generalization. The game can also be generalized as a nd game.
Many board games share the element of trying to be the first to get n-in-a-row, including Three Men's Morris, Nine Men's Morris, pente, gomoku, Qubic, Connect Four, Quarto, Gobblet, Order and Chaos, Toss Across, and Mojo.
Variants of tic-tac-toe date back several millennia.
An early variation of tic-tac-toe was played in the Roman Empire, around the first century BC. It was called Terni Lapilli and instead of having any number of pieces, each player only had three, thus they had to move them around to empty spaces to keep playing. The game's grid markings have been found chalked all over Rome. However, according to Claudia Zaslavsky's book Tic Tac Toe: And Other Three-In-A Row Games from Ancient Egypt to the Modern Computer, Tic-tac-toe could be traced back to ancient Egypt. Another closely related ancient game is Three Men's Morris which is also played on a simple grid and requires three pieces in a row to finish.
3-dimensional tic-tac-toe on a 3×3×3 board. In this game, the first player has an easy win by playing in the centre if 2 people are playing.
One can play on a board of 4x4 squares, winning in several ways. Winning can include: 4 in a straight line, 4 in a diagonal line, 4 in a diamond, or 4 to make a square. Another variant, Qubic, is played on a 4×4×4 board; it was solved by Oren Patashnik in 1980 (the first player can force a win). Higher dimensional variations are also possible.
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