How many variants of Noughts and Crosses do you know?(Diversions)

Last issue you were left with the promise that variants of the traditional noughts and crosses game would be explored. Here are just a few.

Investigate misere Noughts and Crosses versions in which the player forced to complete a line of 3 is the loser. Martin Gardner calls this "Toetacktick", of course (Gardner, 1959, p. 44).

Try Connect Four (four in a row with gravity using a 6 x 6 board)-widely available in sturdy affordable versions from many $2 and reject shops, and more expensively as a brand-name product in toy and games shops. As with Clarkson's 3-D Stacking Cube Noughts and Crosses, a piece (or a drawn 0 or X) cannot be left suspended in mid-air. Hence the placing of pieces (or marks) works upwards from the ground-floor.

Go-Moku or Five-In-A-Row is an excellent extension of Noughts and Crosses. Go-Moku (five in a row on a large board, such as 20 x 20) is based on the materials of the outstanding and classic Chinese territory-capturing game Go, or Wei-chi--a game that is well worth investigating! (see Gough, 2000, pp. 74-75). As a "make-it-yourself" or pencil-and-paper game, players use squared paper and counters of different color, or one player draws Xs and the other draws Os. …