the.com/tic tac toe

means A simple grid game for two players who take turns marking X's and O's, trying to line up three in a row before the other does — and which, played well, always ends in a draw.

from The current American name seems to echo nonsense-rhyme chants like 'tick-tack-toe' used in old children's rhymes and games involving tapping or marking. Before that, the underlying game is ancient — three-in-a-row grid games were scratched into Roman pavements as 'terni lapilli,' and simple row-games appear across many cultures. The 'noughts and crosses' name used in Britain is more literal, just describing the O's and X's themselves. Exactly when the 'tic tac toe' label attached to this particular grid game is murky, so treat the naming history as patchy rather than a clean story.