More Variants, Explained
These five aren't playable on the site yet, but here's how each one works.
Wild Tic Tac Toe
In Wild tic tac toe, both players may place either an X or an O on any turn, and whoever completes three in a row of either symbol wins. It sounds chaotic, but it's a real combinatorial game with sharp tactics - The first player wins with correct play by opening in the center. Try it with a friend and pen and paper; our printable boards work perfectly.
Numerical Tic Tac Toe
Invented by mathematician Ronald Graham: one player owns the odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7, 9), the other the evens (2, 4, 6, 8). Players take turns placing one of their unused numbers on the grid, and the first to complete any line summing to exactly 15 wins. It's tic tac toe meets the 3×3 magic square - More on that connection in our math page.
3D Tic Tac Toe (Qubic)
Played in a 4×4×4 cube - 64 cells and 76 winning lines, including diagonals that pass through the cube's interior. Qubic was fully solved in 1980: the first player wins with perfect play, but the strategy is far beyond memorisation. The 3×3×3 version is a trivial first-player win, which is why serious 3D play uses the 4×4×4 cube.
Three Men's Morris
The ancestor. Each player has only three pieces; once all are placed, turns continue by sliding a piece to an adjacent empty point until someone forms a line. Boards for it are carved into the roof slabs of ancient Egyptian temples, and the Romans played a version called terni lapilli - Read the full story on our history page.
Gomoku (Five in a Row)
The heavyweight cousin: five in a row on a 15×15 Go board. Unrestricted Gomoku is a solved first-player win, so tournament play uses opening restrictions (Renju rules). If you enjoy our 5×5 four-in-a-row, Gomoku is the same idea at professional depth.
Which Variant Should You Play?
| You want… | Play |
|---|---|
| A quick classic game | Classic vs computer or 2 player |
| A real strategic challenge | Ultimate |
| Bigger boards, more room | 5×5 or 4×4 |
| To melt your brain | Misère |
| To finally beat a perfect AI | Hard mode (spoiler: draw is the ceiling) |
New to the game entirely? Every variant above still follows the same core idea covered on our rules page before it gets bent, flipped or expanded.
Variant FAQ
How many tic tac toe variants are there?
There's no single fixed number, but this page covers nine of the most established: Ultimate, 5×5, 4×4, Misère, Wild, Numerical, 3D (Qubic), Three Men's Morris and Gomoku. Four of them - Ultimate, 5×5, 4×4 and Misère - Are playable free right here.
Which tic tac toe variants can I play free on TicTacToe.now?
Four: Ultimate Tic Tac Toe, 5×5 (four in a row), 4×4, and Misère (reverse), each against a computer opponent with no download or sign-up. The other five variants are explained on this page but not yet playable here.
What is the hardest tic tac toe variant?
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe is the deepest of the playable variants - It has no known perfect strategy. Among the explainer variants, 3D Qubic (a 4×4×4 cube) is the most complex; it is solved as a first-player win but far beyond human memorisation.