Tic tac toe FAQ

Yes. The tic tac toe game on this site is completely free to play in your browser. You will not be asked to sign up, hand over an email address, download anything or pay. Open the play page and the board is ready immediately — nothing is locked behind a form or an advertisement.

Yes. Choose "Play vs AI" and you play as X against the computer as O. Three difficulty levels are available: Easy, Medium and Hard. You can switch between them at any time, including in the middle of a round, and the board resets only when you ask it to.

Yes. "Two Players" mode lets two people play on the same screen, taking turns on one device. X always goes first, then turns alternate automatically. The scoreboard counts wins for both players and draws, so you can play a long series and keep track without writing anything down.

Yes, completely. The Tic Tac Toe Android app makes no network requests at all — the opponent runs on your device, so there is nothing to download mid-game. It works in aeroplane mode, underground, or anywhere without a signal. The app has no ads and collects no data.

You win by placing three of your marks in a straight line — across a row, down a column, or along either diagonal. There are eight possible winning lines on a 3×3 grid. The strongest opening is the centre square, because it belongs to four of those eight lines.

Yes. Tic Tac Toe is an Android game published under the package name com.shahbaz.tictactoe. It runs on phones and tablets in portrait orientation. No iOS release exists at the moment. The browser version on this site runs the same rules and the same AI code, so nothing is lost if you play here first.

The browser game on this site keeps your score, mode and difficulty in your own browser, so a refresh will not wipe them. The Android app works differently: it counts wins and draws for the current session and resets them when you leave the match. Neither version uploads anything anywhere.

No. Tic Tac Toe has no accounts at all, on this website or in the Android app. You never enter a name, an email address or a password. The browser game stores your preferences locally on your own device and nothing is sent to a server.

No — the best result available against Hard is a draw. Hard evaluates every possible continuation before each move using a minimax search, so it never makes a mistake. Tic tac toe is a solved game: when both players play perfectly the result is always a draw. Beating Hard is mathematically impossible.

They are three separate algorithms. Easy picks any free square at random and will miss obvious wins. Medium takes a winning move if one exists, blocks yours if it does not, then prefers the centre and corners. Hard searches the entire game tree and plays perfectly every single move.

No. No banner ads, no full-screen ads between rounds, no video ads. Nor are there in-app purchases or a paid tier. The app contains no advertising library and no analytics SDK at all, which is why it needs no network permission to work.

X always moves first, in both the browser game and the Android app. This is the standard convention and it matters: with perfect play from both sides the game is a draw, but X has more chances to force a mistake. Against the computer you always play as X.

Yes — they are the same game under two names. "Noughts and crosses" is the usual British name, "tic tac toe" the American one. The nought is the O and the cross is the X. The rules, the 3×3 grid and the eight winning lines are identical in both.

The round is a draw, sometimes called a "cat's game". A draw happens when all nine squares are filled and no line of three has been completed. Draws are common — between two players who both know what they are doing, almost every game of tic tac toe ends this way.

Any current browser on any device. The game works in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. It runs entirely on your device with no server round-trips, so it stays responsive on slow connections and keeps working if your connection drops mid-round.

Yes. Tab to the board, then use the arrow keys to move between squares and Enter or Space to place your mark. Every square is a real button with a spoken label describing its position and contents, and turn changes and results are announced to screen readers.