tick-tack-toe
[tick-tack n.; cf. tip-tap-toe s.v. tip-tap, tit-tat-toe s.v. tit n.2]
a. A children's game played on a slate, consisting in trying with the eyes shut to bring the pencil down on one of the numbers of a set, the number hit being scored.
| 1884 Mag. of Art Feb. 135/2 He saw those children playing tic-tac-toe. 1899 Crockett Anna Mark xii, Playing at quoits, tops, marbles, tic-tac-toe, jacks, knuckle-bones. |
b. U.S. = noughts and crosses (see nought n. 7 c; ought n.3); also the cross-shaped frame in which this game is played; also fig.
| 1960 S. Plath in Sewanee Review LXVIII. 604 The jacket is patterned with brown squares the size of cigarette packs, each square boldly outlined in black. You could play tick-tack-toe on it. 1975 Nat. Geographic Apr. 500 (caption) Tick-tack-toe of a new apartment complex rises amid mud-and-wattle houses in Zanzibar town. 1976 N. Thornburg Cutter & Bone xi. 266 A tick-tack-toe form filled with zeros. 1978 G. Vidal Kalki i. 8 Just past the tall sick palms at the edge of the pool, the exhaust of a half-dozen jets was making a kind of tick-tack-toe in the dusty brown sky over Los Angeles. 1980 Dædalus Spring 46 A computer designed only to issue the company's pay-checks might stalemate me perpetually in tic-tac-toe. |