Naughts and Crosses

by Kevin J. Lin

Puzzle 1

Six X's can be placed on a tic-tac-toe grid without three falling in a row, column, or diagonal.

Puzzle 2

By thinking "outside the box" you can cross all nine dots with four connecting line segments.

Updated 2/6/1999:

Quite a few people took thinking "outside the box" one step further and pointed out that because the dots aren't dimensionless points, the puzzle can be solved with only three very long lines forming a stretched "Z". The illustration, unfortunately, would go "outside the page".

Back to the Puzzle