tit-tat-toe

Definitions

noun a game in which two players alternately put crosses and circles in one of the compartments of a square grid of nine spaces; the object is to get a row of three crosses or three circles before the opponent does

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tit-tat-toe.

A small boy was squalling in the seat opposite, and Carl took him from his tired mother and lured him into a game of tit-tat-toe.

The Trail of the Hawk A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life Sinclair Lewis 1918
Myself, I'm certificated twice or three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself when, after I'd spent a day and a sleepless night over the job, I saw the game of tit-tat-toe that Rooum made of it in an hour or two.

Widdershins Oliver [pseud.] Onions 1917
She had a family tartan -- heather brown, with Lincoln green tit-tat-toe crisscrosses -- and she had learned how to walk from a thousand years of strong-walking ancestors.

The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Gouverneur Morris 1914
Here and there were stealthy games of tit-tat-toe, practiced, doubtless, behind the teacher's back.

Chimney-Pot Papers Fritz August Gottfried Endell 1906
On scraps of paper we played tit-tat-toe; we improvised a checkerboard and played checkers.

The Long Labrador Trail Dillon Wallace 1901
Maybe the teacher's nerves were too highly strung to endure the squeaking of gritty pencils, but I think the real reason for their banishment is, that slates invited too strongly the game of noughts and crosses, or tit-tat-toe, three in

Back Home Eugene Wood 1891
But if slates favored tit-tat-toe, they also favored ciphering, and nothing but good can come from that.

Back Home Eugene Wood 1891