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• n  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

• And, like Stephen Crane, who had never seen a battle when he wrote his war masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, Royce Brier reports fighting not as a tricky tit-tat-toe of .

• ticktacktoe
• ticktacktoo
• tick-tack-toe
• tic-tac-toe
• noughts and crosses