Printable Tic-Tac-Toe Boards

You can be playing in a couple of minutes: print the sheet, find two pencils, and sit down.

Each page holds one board, printed big and bold, with thick lines, generous squares, and nothing decorative crowding the edges. The size matters more than you would think. On a small grid the marks get cramped, you end up arguing about whose X is in which square, and the whole thing turns into a smudge.

Download: Tic-tac-toe boards, free PDF, Letter + A4. No signup, no tricks.

What you need

• The PDF, printed one-sided
• Plain paper, copy paper is perfect, card stock is overkill
• Two pencils, or two different coloured markers
• A flat surface, which can be a book on your knees

That is it. No cutting, no glue, no setup. If someone tells you they are not crafty, this is a good place to start them.

Steps

1. Print the page that matches your paper. There is a Letter page and an A4 page in the file. Print only yours. Printing both wastes a sheet and confuses everyone at the table.

2. Set the printer to Actual Size, not Fit to Page. The board still works if it scales, because the lines just drift in from the margins and the squares lose a little room. Actual Size keeps the grid as big as the page allows, which is what the sheet is for.

3. Print several copies while the printer is warm. A game is over quickly and one sheet is one game, so print a few. Six of them will see you through a wait somewhere, and the extra pages cost almost nothing.

4. Hand out the pencils and settle who is X. The classic rule: X goes first. If you want fairer games, alternate who starts each round, because going first is a real advantage on a three-by-three grid.

5. Play. Then swap. Mark one square per turn. Three in a row wins, across, down, or corner to corner. When the board fills with no winner, that is a draw, and draws are normal. Two players who both know what they are doing will draw nearly every time, and that is just how the game works out.

The gotcha nobody mentions

Tic-tac-toe is solved. Once a child works out the middle-square trick, the draws start and it stops being much fun. When that happens, it is your cue to change the rules rather than give up on the game.

Three rule tweaks that keep it going:

• Three-mark limit. Each player may only have three marks on the board. On your fourth turn, your oldest mark lifts and moves. Suddenly nothing is safe.
• Misère. Three in a row loses. It undoes every instinct the kids have just built up.
• Blindfold-ish. One player calls out squares by row and column while the other marks the board. Good in a car, though it does cause arguments.

One variation

Slide a printed board into a clear plastic sleeve and play with a dry-wipe marker. One sheet then lasts for game after game, and a cloth wipes it clean between rounds. Keep the sleeve and marker in a bag by the door and you have something to hand at a restaurant table.

Download: Tic-tac-toe boards, free PDF, Letter + A4. No signup, no tricks.

Before you go

When the draws set in, print the dots and boxes game sheet. It uses the same two pencils, has a lot more to it, and holds up against a clever opponent. If you would rather draw your own grids, the free dot grid paper pack is a good place to start, and everything else we have ready to print sits on the free printables page.

Print six and leave them in the car. You will be glad of them on a rainy afternoon.