Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe - Free Ultimate Tic Tac Toe: Nine Boards, One Strategy Battle
Tic Tac Toe 5x53.0
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Ultimate Tic Tac Toe Online
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe is free to play online and stacks nine games of tic tac toe into one strategy battle. Nine small 3x3 boards sit inside one big 3x3 grid, and you win by claiming three small boards in a row. One rule ties the nine boards together: the square you choose inside a small board decides which board your opponent must play in next, so every move also picks where your opponent goes.
On Foony you play it in your browser with no download, against a friend who joins by invite link or against a computer opponent with five difficulty levels. The board you are allowed to play in is always highlighted, which makes this version far easier to learn than the pen-and-paper one, where somebody always loses track of which board they are allowed to play in.
Players also know the game as super tic tac toe or meta tic tac toe. It took off online after math teacher Ben Orlin found mathematicians playing it at a picnic and wrote it up in his 2013 post on Math with Bad Drawings, and it has been the strategy player's version of the game ever since.
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe Rules
X always moves first, and inside each small board the rules are the classic ones: mark empty cells, three in a row wins it. What changes is what a small board is worth and what happens after every move.
Claim a board
Line up three marks inside a small board and it becomes your square on the big grid.
Claimed means closed
Nobody plays in a decided board again, even if it still has empty cells.
Tied boards block
A small board that fills with no winner counts for neither player, and no big line can be completed through it.
Win the game
Three of your boards in a straight line on the big grid, across, down, or diagonally.
Tap between the two endings below to see how a single tied board blocks a winning line.
If every open board fills up before either side lines up three on the big grid, the game is a draw.
Where Your Move Sends Your Opponent
The rule that decides most games is the send rule. Think of each small board as a miniature copy of the big grid: its nine cells line up with the nine board positions. Whichever cell you mark, your opponent must play their next move in the board at that same position. Mark a top right cell, and their next move happens in the top right board. Mark a center cell, and they go to the center board. When that target board is already finished, won by either player or completely full, they may play in any board still open instead. Click around the small board below to see it work.
On Foony you never track this in your head. The board you must play in is highlighted in amber, and while you hover over a cell, the board that move would send your opponent to lights up in their color, so you see the consequence of a move before you commit to it. Claimed boards get covered with the winner's mark, and you can tap a cover to peek at the moves underneath.
How to Play Ultimate Tic Tac Toe on Foony
Starting a game from this page already has the Ultimate board selected. From anywhere else on Foony, create a room and choose Ultimate from the board presets, which sit next to the classic 3x3 and the bigger boards. Share the URL with your opponent and they are in the game straight from their browser, no account needed to play.
Solo, the room seats a bot at one of five difficulties: Easy, Novice, Skilled, Expert, or Unbeatable, chosen once for the match. The turn timer gives each player 15 seconds per move by default, and the host can lengthen it or switch it off for slow thinking games. Rooms scale to 1,000 players by dividing everyone between an X side and an O side, with teammates taking turns in rotation. Winning a game here earns the Ultimate Champion achievement. Shut your opponent out completely, so they never claim a single board, and you earn Total Control on top.
Ultimate Tic Tac Toe Strategy
Every ultimate tic tac toe strategy question comes down to the same idea: the send half of your move usually matters more than the mark half.
- Guard the center board. The center of the big grid sits in four winning lines, more than any other board. Every center cell you mark sends your opponent there, so early on, prefer moves that keep them out of it.
- Read each move twice. Once for what it does in the board you are in, once for where it sends your opponent. A strong local mark that drops them into a board where they win on the spot is a blunder.
- Send them somewhere useless. A move that points at a board where your marks already block every line gives their next turn nothing to gain. Steering your opponent through boards like that is worth more than any single line of your own.
- Give up the right boards. Not every small board deserves a fight. Letting them take a board that extends none of their big lines is often cheaper than the two moves it costs to contest it.
- Be careful handing out free choices. Late in the game, a cell that points at a decided board lets your opponent pick any open board they want. Only do it when every open board is safe for you.
Openings matter more than they look. For one common version of the rules, researchers proved in 2020 that the first player can force a win with perfect play. No human plays perfectly, so between people the game stays a contest, and the player who thinks one send further ahead usually wins.
From Nine Boards Back to One
If you want the original game, the main tic tac toe page has the classic 3x3 board plus 5x5 and 7x7 in the same room, switched with a single board setting. The 5x5 tic tac toe board is a good middle step: one big grid, four in a row to win, and no sending to keep track of.