Ultimate Noughts and Crosses

Player 1

Nought

 

Player 2

Cross

 

Get Ready

First player's name:

Second player's name:

If you have not played Ultimate Noughts and Crosses before read the instructions below.

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Pointer

A game requiring you to devise a strategy far more complex than that required for the standard noughts and crosses game.

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Instructions

I initially read about this game in the beautiful book Math with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin. In the book the game is called Ultimate Tic Tac Toe.

He describes that when on a picnic in Berkeley he saw a group of mathematicians crowding around their version of this game. I have adapted the rules slightly as follows:

  1. Each turn you choose a square on one of the mini boards;
  2. When you get three in a line on a mini board you win that board;
  3. When you get three mini boards in a line you win the game.
  4. The mini board you can play on is in the same position on the big board as the square the other player previously chose on that mini board.
  5. If a mini board is full or already has been won by one of the players then you can play on any of the remaining available mini boards.

If you play against the computer you will be pleased to hear that the computer's game is quite basic at the moment. It hasn't yet figured out the best strategy so you stand a very good chance of beating it.

Tom Bowler, Twitter

Monday, June 24, 2019

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