Editing Tic-tac-toe (section)

== History ==
Games played on three-in-a-row boards can be traced back to [[ancient Egypt]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Zaslavsky|first=Claudia|author-link=Claudia Zaslavsky|title=Tic Tac Toe: And Other Three-In-A Row Games from Ancient Egypt to the Modern Computer|year=1982|publisher=Crowell|isbn=0-690-04316-3|url=https://archive.org/details/tictactoeothert00zasl|url-access=registration}}</ref> where such game boards have been found on roofing tiles dating from around 1300 BC.<ref>{{cite book|last=Parker|first=Marla|title=She Does Math!: Real-life Problems from Women on the Job|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N4nmGjq5dWsC&pg=PA153|year=1995|publisher=Mathematical Association of America|isbn=978-0-88385-702-1|page=153}}</ref>

An early variation of tic-tac-toe was played in the [[Roman Empire]], around the first century BC. It was called ''terni lapilli'' (''three pebbles at a time'') and instead of having any number of pieces, each player had only three; thus, they had to move them around to empty spaces to keep playing.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sweetoothdesign.com/games-tic-tac-toe|title=Tic tac toe Ancient Roman 1st century BC |website=Sweetooth Design Company |access-date=December 4, 2016}}</ref> The game's grid markings have been found chalked all over Rome. Another closely related ancient game is [[three men's morris]] which is also played on a simple grid and requires three pieces in a row to finish,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~salley/SCA/Games/morris.html|title=Morris Games|website=www-cs.canisius.edu|access-date=September 5, 2012|archive-date=March 13, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130313100626/http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~salley/SCA/Games/morris.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> and [[Picaria]], a game of the [[Puebloans]].

The different names of the game are more recent. The first print reference to "noughts and crosses" ([[nought]] being an alternative word for 'zero'), the British name, appeared in 1858, in an issue of ''[[Notes and Queries]]''.<ref>{{cite wikisource | scan=Page:Notes and Queries – Series 2 – Volume 6.djvu/441 | title=Notes and Queries | series=Series 2 | volume=VI | page=152 }}</ref> The first print reference to a game called "tick-tack-toe" occurred in 1884, but referred to "a children's game played on a slate, consisting of trying with the eyes shut to bring the pencil down on one of the numbers of a set, the number hit being scored".{{Quote without source|date=August 2021}} "Tic-tac-toe" may also derive from "tick-tack", the name of an old version of [[backgammon]] first described in 1558. The US renaming of "noughts and crosses" to "tic-tac-toe" occurred in the 20th century.<ref>[[Oxford English Dictionary]] entries for "Noughts and Crosses", "Tick-Tack" and "Tick-Tack-Toe", [http://dictionary.oed.com/ dictionary.oed.com]</ref>

In 1952, ''[[OXO (video game)|OXO]]'' (or ''Noughts and Crosses''), developed by British computer scientist [[Sandy Douglas]] for the [[EDSAC]] computer at the [[University of Cambridge]], became one of the first known video games.<ref name="EDSAC">{{cite book |title=Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming |last=Wolf |first=Mark J. P. |date=August 16, 2012 |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group]] |isbn=978-0-313-37936-9 |pages=3–7}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | last=Cohen | first=D.S. | title=OXO aka Noughts and Crosses | website=Lifewire | date=March 12, 2019 | url=https://www.lifewire.com/oxo-aka-noughts-and-crosses-729624 | access-date=August 29, 2019}}</ref> The computer player could play perfect games of tic-tac-toe against a human opponent.<ref name="EDSAC" />

In 1975, tic-tac-toe was also used by [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] students to demonstrate the computational power of [[Tinkertoy]] elements. The Tinkertoy computer, made out of (almost) only Tinkertoys, is able to play tic-tac-toe perfectly.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/TinkertoyComputer/TinkerToy.html |title=Tinkertoys and tic-tac-toe |access-date=September 27, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070824200126/http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/TinkertoyComputer/TinkerToy.html |archive-date=August 24, 2007 }}</ref> It is currently on display at the [[Computer History Museum]].<ref>{{cite book | url=https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/X39.81 | title=Original Tinkertoy Computer | date=January 5, 1978 }}</ref>