Tic Tac Toe Online: Classic and Ultimate

Tic Tac Toe: Classic and Ultimate is our own take on the pencil-and-paper game everyone knows, drawn on a sheet of notebook paper with thick marker strokes that draw themselves as you play. In Classic, you and your opponent take turns putting an X or an O in a free cell of a 3x3 grid. Three of your marks in a row, a column or a diagonal win. If all nine cells fill with no line, the game is a draw.

Play the computer at three levels. Easy plays by feel but always takes a win it can see. Medium also blocks every line you are about to finish. Hard plays perfectly: it has looked at every position the game can reach, so it never loses, and the best you can do is a draw. You choose whether you play X or O and who moves first, the score of the series is kept at the top of the screen, and undo is free against the computer. Two players can also share one phone, tablet or computer and take turns.

Ultimate Tic Tac Toe puts nine small boards inside one big grid. The cell you mark sends your opponent to the matching small board: mark the top-right cell and they must play in the top-right board, which lights up so nobody loses track. Win a small board with three in a row and it becomes your big X or O; win three small boards in a line to win the game. A board that is won or full is closed, and anyone sent to a closed board may play in any open one. The Ultimate computer comes in Easy, Medium and Hard too. Hard searches many moves ahead in the background and still answers in under a second.

The daily puzzles are five positions, the same for everyone each day and checked by the computer so that exactly one move works: two Classic positions where you force a win in 2 or 3 moves against perfect defence, and three Ultimate positions where you win a small board in one move, win the game in one move, or force the game win in two. A wrong move is taken back and costs points, and three wrong moves lose the puzzle. Each puzzle scores 200 points on the first try, 120 on the second or 60 on the third, plus a speed bonus of up to 40 (one point off for every 3 seconds you spend thinking). The best possible day is 1,200 points, and your total goes on the daily leaderboard.

The only paid item is a hint for 10 gems: it circles the Hard computer's move, or in a puzzle the winning move. Hints never change your score. Tic Tac Toe: Classic and Ultimate is free to play in your browser with no download or sign-up, works with touch, mouse or keyboard, and its art, sound effects and music are all made for the game.