How to Play Tic Tac Toe for Geeks

The normal way to play tic tac toe is to draw the board and take turns writing x's and o's. The slightly more advanced way is to label the spots 1-9 and each player call out a number keeping track of the game in your head. And now it is time to get serious.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• two players

1. These versions of Tic Tac Toe will be played in your mind and involve quite a bit of visualization. To start off imagine a tic tac toe board where the squares are labeled 1-9 like a phone pad. Once you have mastered this version move on to step 2.

2. Now imagine a rubic's cube where each side a tic tac toe board. Label each side, Top A, Bottom B, and the four sides E,F,G,H. A player would then call for example A5, would be the top center square. Once each player has mastered playing these 6 tic tac toe boards at once move on to step 3.

3. In this step, variations of how to get a tic tac toe are applied. In this example, a player may get a normal tic tac toe on any face, or win by four in a row. To win by 4 in a row, the cube is turned 4 times in one direction and each face must have the same square marked. For example, we will use faces E,F,G,H (the side faces) Starting with E6. E6 has an x, turn the face left, F6 has an x, turn the face left again, G6 has an x, turn the face the forth time left, and H6 has an x. so X's win. You can move the cube in any direction, left, right, up, down, but once a direction is selected, then that direction must be used four times.

4. This version is much like the above one, using 6 sides, playing normal tic tac toe. Instead of using only the sides, the win can be through the cube. The easiest way to think about this one is by imagining a 3x3x3 cube block where each cube can be turned into an X or an O.

[Velvett23]

on 12/23/2008 thank you for the information