If you like tic-tac-toe, you might love a giant tic-tac-toe board like this, with 9 mini tic-tac-toe boards! Each time a player wins a mini-board, that counts as that player’s shape (X or O), and whoever gets 3 mini-boards in a row wins. How do you play? When a player fills in any little square, the next player has to go to the matching mini-board – so if you fill in the top left square of any board, the other player must go now to the top left mini-board. As the boards fill up, it gets more tricky – and more fun!
Wee ones: How many spaces does a regular tic-tac-toe board have? See if you can count them all!
Little kids: If 5 squares are filled in with Xs on a regular tic-tac-toe board and the rest are filled with Os, how many Os are there? Bonus: If you fill in the top left corner of the board, in how many directions could you win 3 in a row?
Big kids: In this giant board with a mini tic-tac-toe board in each square, how many tiny squares are on the whole page? Bonus: If you can fill in any square on the center board, and then that player can fill in any square on the next board, how many possible pairs of first 2 moves can the game have?
Answers:
Wee ones: 9 spaces.
Little kids: 4 Os. Bonus: In 3 directions: across, down, or on the diagonal to the bottom right.
Big kids: 81, since it’s 9 x 9. Bonus: 80 pairs. Each of the 9 squares leads to 9 possible choices on the next board which would be 9 x 9 = 81…but if you fill the center square on that center board, now there are only 8 squares open on that board, not 9.
