10 ms·
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
- yarekt 13y agohttp://graffitiwall.co.uk/ultimatetictactoe http://graffitiwall.co.uk/ultimatetictactoe My quick implementation of this game Edit: For anyone who arrived 10 seconds after i posted that link, The board resembled the ultimate tic tac toe, and then quickly degraded into a paint fight
- speeder 13y agoInteresting that hackers instead of working or reading HN are very interested in fighting over the board (ie: gray color people try to erase it, pink color try to draw a board, and blue color trying to play the game...)
- danielweber 13y ago"Someone keeps stealing my letters" http://www.lunchtimers.com/ http://www.lunchtimers.com/
- cilo 13y agoWho needs comments, all posts should just have a graffiti wall. What could go wrong?
- yashg 13y agoThis is brilliant! Has anybody created an online version of this?
- gambogi 13y agoI can bet you there will be now
- ronaldx 13y agoIt doesn't observe a win and for now you have to play against yourself, but: http://xoxo.gl/ultimate http://xoxo.gl/ultimate
- monsterix 13y agoThere you go, a free hand one :-) https://bubbleideas.com/letters/ultimate-tic-tac-toe https://bubbleideas.com/letters/ultimate-tic-tac-toe
- yarekt 13y agohttp://ultic.waynecrouch.co.uk/ http://ultic.waynecrouch.co.uk/ A quick hack while avoiding doing actual work. The code is on github, We might implement multiplayer soon
- Kurtz79 13y agohttp://xkcd.com/832/ http://xkcd.com/832/ Randall Munroe could do a "small" update to this based on these rules... although it would take some time.
- lucb1e 13y agoA "small" update? I think this is more like the difference between checkers and chess. But yes, relevant xkcd
- tripzilch 13y ago> I think this is more like the difference between checkers and chess I'm not sure what you mean by this? BTW are you aware that despite it has only one type of stone and simpler rules, checkers is in fact the more complex game, to write an AI for?
- lucb1e 13y agoI don't know why you're downvoted for asking a question, but what I meant is this: The person I replied to said the admin of XKCD could do a "small" update to his post about tic tac toe. I remarked that this is not a small update, and used checkers and chess as an analogy. Chess is much more complex and harder to learn than checkers, and as you remarked, chess is indeed harder to write an effective AI for. Just like the difference between tic tac toe and ultimate tic tac toe ;) Edit: I meant chess is harder to write an AI for of course, not checkers. Fixed.
- shawabawa3 13y ago> checkers is in fact the more complex game, to write an AI for? I'm almost certain that's false. Checkers is weakly solved (There are AI's that will never lose, only win or draw) I assume you meant Go, not checkers. And that's mainly harder for AI because the board is 5 times bigger.
- saalweachter 13y agoCheckers has been solved. Both players can draw with perfect play. The usual caveat with checkers is that you are probably not good at it. Even if it is simpler and smaller than chess, being a good chess player gives you no advantage and the game is still sufficiently complex that you can't quickly brute force it without years of practice. A chess master will get their ass handed to them by a skilled yokel.
- deletes 13y agoImportant question, can this game be solved, like ordinary tic-tac-toe. Is there a solution that always leads to draw of defeat.
- lucb1e 13y agoRegardless of whether you can build a perfect AI on commodity hardware, though I haven't played this yet, it promises to be a much more interesting game than the normal tic-tac-toe! Harder to draw a lot on napkins though, but then again, a single game takes much longer.
- k2enemy 13y agoZermelo's theorem[1] says "yes," although I don't know which it is (between draw, p1 win, p1 lose). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%27s_theorem_%28game_theory%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo%27s_theorem_%28game_th...
- CJefferson 13y agoIn fact, it can't be a p1 lose, because the extra piece p1 gets can never be a disadvantage (you can prove this more carefully). The question is then is it a p1 win, or draw? A similar situation arises in the game 'hex', except in that game there is no draw, so it has to be a p1 win!
- Someone 13y ago"because the extra piece p1 gets can never be a disadvantage (you can prove this more carefully)" Please do so, as I do not see that this is trivially true. I see two tricky cases: - your opponent must play on the board where p1 is placed, and that board would have room iff p1 weren't present => Addition of p1 gives him a 'move anywhere' move. - you must play on the board where p1 is placed, and that board would have room iff p1 weren't present. The normal argument 'move anywhere and assume that that 'anywhere' is where your first move went, and you just played p1' does not help here, as changing the first move may change where your opponent's first move could have gone. Except from an exhaustive search, I do not see how to prove that you can prevent either case.
- willvarfar 13y agoMy daughters play a variant of tic-tac-toe with a physical board and just three stones each. I brute-forced this with a little lunchbreak program and the visualisation output from graphviz was ... 340 MEGAPIXELS! I blogged about it: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/35858593837/tic-tac-toe http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/35858593837/tic-t...
- fduran 13y agoThat's how we used to play as kids, there's an algorithm so that the first mover always wins.
- Millennium 13y agoSounds a lot like Three Men's Morris. Nifty.
- michaelfeathers 13y agoMy favorite "mathematician game" is Sprouts: http://nrich.maths.org/2413 http://nrich.maths.org/2413 First heard about it in a column in Scientific American by A. K. Dewdney. The rules are simple and it is rather fun. In one of his columns he talked about playing a toroidal version where a line going off one edge of a rectangular page comes back in on the opposite side.
- kernel_sanders 13y agoMy Dad, a physicist, taught me that game as a kid. I have great memories of him producing a pen at any restaurant we might have been at, and he and I passing any waiting time playing sprouts on napkins or paper scraps. I since play it with my kids.
- michaelfeathers 13y agoDid you ever learn about the variant called 'Brussels Sprouts' and the trick to winning?
- coldpie 13y agoPlease explain :)
- michaelfeathers 13y agoIf I remember correctly, instead of only allowing three edges to emanate from a vertex, you can have four. All other rules are the same. Apparently, in that set up, the the first player either always wins or loses depending upon whether the number of initial vertices is odd.
- Someone 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_%28game%29#Brussels_Sprouts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_%28game%29#Brussels_Spr...
- willvarfar 13y ago
- mrspeaker 13y agoI don't understand the clarifying rule #2: "What if my opponent sends me to a board that’s full?" Isn't that impossible, as there is a maximum of 9 ways to be sent to each local area?
- elsporko 13y agoIsn't it possible that the first board played could become full since the first mark isn't the result of normal gameplay? Move 0.
- lke 13y agoIf you look his Orwin Gambit start it would happen. It's because this the first move is done freely so you end up with one area ahead of it's paths (ie full but with only 8 path already taken).
- cousin_it 13y agoI think you can get sent to a full board only if the game started on that board.
- jbri 13y agoOf course, there's a cascading effect where it's now possible to also overflow the board you chose with your free move.
- Delfino 13y agoNeat variant. I made something similar for the last ludum dare: http://madelfino.github.io/LD26/postcompo.html http://madelfino.github.io/LD26/postcompo.html
- M4v3R 13y agoNice! Managed to beat it, but it wasn't easy: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1127246/Screenshots/5ths.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1127246/Screenshots/5ths.png
- lkozma 13y agoI recall seeing this before, called "crazy" tic tac toe: http://tictactoe-cssi.appspot.com/ http://tictactoe-cssi.appspot.com/ via: http://neil.fraser.name/news/2011/07/16/ http://neil.fraser.name/news/2011/07/16/
- deanclatworthy 13y agoThe first of these doesn't follow the same rules as OP. It seems that you can retake a board if you get a new row in a box that has already been won.
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- quesera 13y agoI think the Orwin gambit can be extended to win the game every time. - Force opponent to fill center miniboard, as he describes. - Force opponent to fill (e.g.) northeast corner in the same way. Opponent now has taken two miniboards, and you have none, but you are one turn away from taking each of the remaining seven. - Pick SW corner of SW corner. You have taken SW corner miniboard. Opponent is forced to play in same SW miniboard, already won by you. - Pick SW corner of S. You have taken S miniboard. Opponent is forced to play in SW corner again, already won by you. - Pick SW corner of SE corner. You have taken SE corner miniboard. - Done. You win. Like regular tictactoe, there is an advantage to going first. Unlike regular tictactoe, the advantage can't be compensated for. Otoh, the second player can use the same strategy with a little more carefulness, as long as they start early. So either player can force the other into a protracted certain loss, unless there's an agreement or a rule against it. That's no fun. EDIT: actually, you can win every time, in far fewer moves, and not using the Orwin gambit at all. It's not necessary to force your opponent to fill any of the miniboards, not even the center. I think this will win in ten moves and never lose driver control (excuse the notation): C/C, C/SW, C/S, [opponent takes C], C/SE, NE/SW, NE/S, NE/SE, [opponent takes NE], SW/SW [you take SW], SW/S [you take S], SW/SE [you take SE, and win]. A variation can be used by either player early in the game, but whoever starts with control would be foolish to lose it. If this is a game played by mathematicians, either I'm wrong, or there are additional rules. :) EDIT2: C/C (first move above) is unnecessary. Nine moves. Perfect inning.
- Someone 13y ago"Fill center, as he describes. Fill (e.g.) northeast corner in the same way." I don't think you can force that. When you have the nine center squares of each square and he has the 8 non-center squares of the center square, it is your opponent's move. The 'force-fill the center square' only works because, in your first move, you occupied the center square. That move prevents your opponent from ever picking the center of the center, thus forcing you to move in the center square.
- jbri 13y agoInstead of filling the center square on the last board, you can fill the corresponding square and then start forcing your opponent to win that board.
- nawitus 13y agoDoes anyone else play the 'infinite board' tic-tac-toe which requires you to get five in a row? It's what I used to play as a student, and it's pretty well-known at least where I live. Nobody bothers with the 3x3 version, but the five in a row version is pretty exciting and requires plenty of strategy and thinking ahead.
- bierik 13y agoI think this is called "Gomoku" (just on a quasi-infinite board): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomoku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomoku I used to play this a lot when I was still at the university
- seri 13y agoYup, Gomoku is a much more difficult game than it looks. Indeed, the game is challenging enough that there is a world championship every odd year. You can find the games from the last world championship here: http://renju.net/media/games.php?gameid=45016 http://renju.net/media/games.php?gameid=45016 I am amazed by the fact that Gomoku can be so hard to master with rules so simple you can explain to a five year old. And unlike Chess where there are a hundred year of theories to learn from before you can get going, Gomoku is still new. After a few weeks studying the standard surewin openings, you can expect to see things in a very different light and the game will get much more interesting. Perhaps Gomoku is best known for programmers as a problem to solve. But it is nowhere near being solved. In fact, the best software are weaker than many top players. I find Gomoku hits the sweet spot when it comes to my desire to play board games. It doesn't consume much of my time. I am always excited to find those long and obscure wins. I think the game needs more love from programmers like me. Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GomokuWorld https://www.facebook.com/GomokuWorld Play here: http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku/ http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku/ Or here: http://fumind.com http://fumind.com
- fc2 13y agoGomoku has already been solved actually, maybe you were thinking of Go? There's a revised version called Connect6 though, in case you are interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect6
- dreen 13y agoThere is another great variant of Tic Tac Toe you can play on a Torus (a donut shape): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Torus.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Torus.png The way to play is to "warp" each side of the board to the side opposite of it. For instance, playing on a 6x6 board with a win condition of length 5: .|X|.|.|.|. X|.|.|.|.|. .|O|.|.|.|. .|O|.|.|X|. .|.|O|X|.|. .|.|X|O|.|. is a win for X, because the upper and lower ends of the board are synonymous. I can't find any material about this on the net, I just played it in school on boring lessons (but more commonly we played for 5 in a row on an infinite board, I personally prefer the Torus)
- arh68 13y ago> Whichever square he picks, that’s the board you must play in next. And what about the dual of this game, where whichever board you pick determines the square he plays next?
- frogpelt 13y agoThere's a way to prevent the Orlin gambit. Allow the player with the last three in row to take another turn. This creates a means of alternating who goes first. I'm not sure whether this gives too much advantage to the other player or not.
- akincisor 13y agoIt does. He can now force you to now place pointless moves in the center square.
- speeder 13y agoWhen my dad was at university he made just out of curiosity a AI to play Tic Tac Toe that started knowing nothing about the game, and tried to learn from playing against the player, until it became impossible to beat it. Later someone complained with university administrators that my dad was "playing games" in the computer lab, and he got banned from it :/ But I guess this version might be even more interesting to make a AI test or something!
- garethadams 13y agoThe only winning move is not to play
- rfisher1968 13y agoI made this a while back. It a HTML5 game made with construct2. http://jenpop.com/game.php?gurl=games/uttt http://jenpop.com/game.php?gurl=games/uttt
- roryokane 13y agoYour game is just Tic-Tac-Toe on a 6x6 board. It is not the same game as the Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe described in the article.
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y agoMy friends used to play something similar with connect 4. You don't expect to meet people who are good at connect 4, but these two guys beat me 100% of the time...
- shardling 13y agoA weird version of tic-tac-toe my friends and I came up with years ago: you play without a board. Any move is valid so long as you could superimpose a standard tic-tac-toe grid over the results. (You assume the marks are at the center of their respective squares; you allow the board to be at any scale or angle, but you can't skew it.) The first two moves have no constraint, so you can just start with an X and O already on the board. And after a few moves there might be only one implied board possible, after which it reduces to the normal game. But I always thought it was an interesting twist.
- lotharbot 13y agoSomebody posted another tic tac toe variant on HN some time ago, where the squares were numbered 1-9 and the goal was to get any three squares that summed to 15. It turns out this is equivalent to playing tic tac toe with sides that wrap around (like a torus).
- gohrt 13y agoalso equivalent to covering every row and column on the board.
- Someone 13y agoNo, that's 100% equivalent to tic tac toe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe#Variations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe#Variations) (To see why no torus version exists: on a '3x3' torus, all squares are identical, so you have must four ways to get three in a row from each starting number. Also, the row/column/diagonal sum must be 15. However, starting with 9, there are only two ways to get 15 with: 1 and 5 and 2 and 4) The variant with nine words, where selecting three words that share a letter wins the game, IMO is even better.
- lotharbot 13y agoI may have misremembered the details of the game, or conflated it with another game. What I remember clearly is that the game was equivalent of tic tac toe on a torus -- one could win with a "diagonal" of the form .|x|. x|.|. .|.|x as well as any of the traditional tic tac toe win conditions.
- solox3 13y agoIt happened a while back, when Bobby Kehres told my colleague and I about the game. https://github.com/1337/Tic-Tac-Toe-Extreme https://github.com/1337/Tic-Tac-Toe-Extreme
- alphaoverlord 13y agoPerhaps the game is less deterministic if you can choose any board as soon as the board is won - not when it is filled. Then, you can only force 3 moves before you have to give up control. Then approaches like the Orwin gambit would not work (it is too costly to lose a board if it only lets you choose three spots.)
- gamegoblin 13y agoAnother interesting way to play tic-tac-toe that makes it a lot harder: There is a bag of numbers 1-9. Players take turns moving numbers from the central bag to their own private bags, removing that number from play. Whenever a player has a subset of exactly 3 numbers that sums to 15, they win. This is isomorphic to tic-tac-toe since the magic square for a 3x3 board has rows/columns/diagonals that sum to 15.
- sudhirj 13y agoCan anyone else hear the quiet roar of a thousand not-so-silent fans as they struggle to dissipate heat caused by furious Xcode and RubyMotion compilations?
- h4pless 13y agoI haven't tested all the cases but this method seems to win every time I've tested it against myself: Start on an edge-center container [N,E,S,W], marking it with it's corresponding sub-board space. Employ the Orwin gambit to fill the initial edge container. When your opponent selects the last space in the first container, wherever you are sent: pick it's corresponding sub-board space and then employ the Orwin gambit again and then repeat the routine until the game is finished. Your opponent gets to pick your next moves but because they eventually must send you to a filled square on the second and third rounds, you have the ability to control the game's end. Starting in the center gives you a tactical disadvantage because it only leaves you 4 paths to victory compared to your opponents 8 with him/her in a position affecting 4 lines, whereas by starting on a side piece, you have 7 paths to victory and your opponents position only benefits him on 2 lines.
- ronaldx 13y agoI made a quick HTML demo for playing through the game at http://xoxo.gl/ultimate http://xoxo.gl/ultimate
- joelthelion 13y agoNow add an AI :)
- ronaldx 13y agoYou think so? I'm not very keen to work on an AI if there's proof of a quick win.
- gwern 13y agoReminds me a bit of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_Ice_%28board_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_Ice_%28board_game%29 / http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4643/fire-and-ice http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4643/fire-and-ice - look at the board.
- irunbackwards 13y agoWe made this into an Android application about a year ago: http://superttt.com http://superttt.com
- iguana 13y agoSomeone needs to write a JavaScript implementation of this!
- jjcm 13y agoThe one I play with my friends is usually a 4-in-a-row, 4 level board. You can win on any individual level, or by creating a straight line of 4 that intersects plays on each level (so playing in the top right of each level would net you a win, for instance). It forces the players to keep a three dimensional model in their head and opens up the board for more counters/strategy. Anyone care for a game? level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|. .|.|.|.
- joeyrobert 13y agoAnother quick implementation of this game: http://joeyrobert.org/projects/ultimatetictactoe/ http://joeyrobert.org/projects/ultimatetictactoe/
- AUmrysh 13y agoWhat if you played it where the square selected is the direction you move to go to the next board. If the player selects the center square on a board, that board must be played again. If the player selects the left square, the board to the left must be played next. If a corner square is picked, you play the board to that diagonal direction. If the corner is not attached to a board, you roll the board around as though the ends are connected (or as though it's an infinitely repeating tiling of the same game). For example, the bottom right square on the bottom right board makes the next board the top left. The center-right square on the center-right board would result in the next board being the center-left board, and so on. Would there be a gambit in this ruleset? edit: So, it looks like the same gambit applies, instead of selecting the center piece you just pick the one pointing toward the center every time.
- randren 13y agoKid-tested. The 7-year-old loves it. Thank you for saving me from plain-old Tic Tac Toe games with my kid.
- minikomi 13y agoWhat happens to the game if you switch order when you take a board?
- crimzonphox 13y agoMy favorite Mathematics game is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Six http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Six Mathematically fair
- baritonehands 13y agoI created a version of this game back in 2008, for the 3 major mobile platforms and PC: PC: http://www.tictactoeten.com/play http://www.tictactoeten.com/play iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tic-tac-toe-ten/id317168510?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tic-tac-toe-ten/id317168510?... Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livelovelearn.tictactoeten&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livelovele... Windows Phone: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/tictactoe10/d84eac98-7a6f-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8 http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/tictactoe10/d84e...
- tictactoeten 13y agoMy team and I have implemented what you call Ultimate Tic Tac Toe as what we call Tic Tac Toe Ten. We put it out for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and have made board game sets to go into school districts with starting in 2008. If any of you in this community are interested in helping us to build out the backend analytics infrastructure to help us make the academic breakdown of this game useful for teachers and students please visit our community at https://www.facebook.com/tictactoeten https://www.facebook.com/tictactoeten and drop me a message or DM us on Twitter (@tictactoeten) ... we are also always looking for volunteers at our school tournaments where we pit kids against each other March Madness style with brackets and give out prizes to the winners ... we are here in the Bay Area, hope to meet some of you guys soon :) cheers, @bware218