Multitasking

Part of Confounding Calendar 2022 (https://confoundingcalendar.itch.io/)

Goal: win all three games of Tic-Tac-Toe concurrently

Bad news: all three games are against a perfect, unbeatable AI opponent
Good news: you can multitask and play more than one game at a time (?)


Extra challenge: this puzzle is winnable "blind" (without seeing the opponents moves or the game state)

There exists a fixed, sequential set of instructions—with no conditionals/ifs— that will win 100% of the time against any opponent, regardless of its exact moves (including an antagonist who has access to your complete plan in advance). 

Imagine I covered up the game UI with a black overlay and replaced the AI with a new one that you know nothing about (don't worry it still has to play by the rules). Assuming you've planned well, you should still be able to get a guaranteed win just by carefully clicking around in the darkness!

Can you find this unbeatable strategy?


Developer notes: I've been toying on-and-off for a while on a 3D first-person puzzle game using Tic-Tac-Toe as its core mechanic. This was an intentionally silly idea to challenge myself and practice puzzle design, but I ended up uncovering a surprising amount of depth and some really cool puzzles. Sadly, it's not likely to ever release (it's become quite large and I've grown too attached to it, so it would be a lot of work to finish to my satisfaction!). But this particular puzzle from the mid-game works relatively well standalone, and it's a shame for none of these puzzles to see the light of day, so I've adapted and restylized it for 2D / web as part of https://confoundingcalendar.itch.io. Hope you enjoy!

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 4.6 out of 5 stars
(8 total ratings)
Authorsouvey
GenrePuzzle
Tagstic-tac-toe
Average sessionA few minutes
LanguagesEnglish
InputsMouse, Touchscreen

Comments

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yall i have the cheat code to winning this
first up, on the first board, place an x on bottom or top right. then on the 3rd board place an x on the bottom or top left, after that on the middle board place an x in the middle for a diagonal
then new game on the first board and redo your diagonal on the second board to have a free x, same goes for the 3rd board, and from there, just dont play bad and you win

i instantly got the the main joke moment and solved the puzzle in like 5 minutes

For the extra challange this works


bXrYcZ means on board X click on row Y colum Z
rX means reset board X
b1r3c1 b3r1c3 b2r2c2 r1 b2r1c1 r3 b2r3c3 b1r1c3 b1r2c2 b1r1c1 b1r2c1 b1r1c2 b3r1c3 b3r2c2 b3r3c3 b3r2c3 b3r3c

if its correct you should have won on all 3 boards

simple solution in imposssiible mode, it took me some fumbling to learn what to do,  a fun puzzle indeed!

WOW. Nice puzzle

(1 edit)

This game is genius. I need to keep thinking about the unbeatable strategy, I love the concept of it.

Normally I'm poor at multitasking, but this puzzle is very cool. Love this idea!

Amazing! I really loved this puzzle. I managed to beat all three games, but definitely not with your perfect solution.

Please finish the big game! I need more of this!

you're right, this is a good puzzle. not sure if my solution fits your extra challenge, but i do have a nice sequence without conditionals. i can think of at least one or two situation where an opponent that knows the plan can spoil it, and i haven't come up with a strategy to circumvent that. will tinker with it!