Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom

Summary

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Radiolab: "Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom"

September 6, 2011 – Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich (with Ian Frazier)

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Episode Overview

In this playful and curious Radiolab short, the hosts set out to map the global reach of the seemingly universal game of tic tac toe. One simple question drives the episode: is tic tac toe truly known everywhere, or do pockets of the world exist where it remains a mystery? Through firsthand storytelling, international crowd-sourcing, and surprise revelations, this episode explores how childhood games transcend—and sometimes fail to transcend—borders and cultures.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rediscovering Tic Tac Toe (01:27–03:01)

• Ignored Game in an Episode About Games:
  The hosts, after a previous deep dive into famous games like baseball and chess, realize they forgot to mention tic tac toe—a game everyone seems to outgrow.
  • “But the incident, there was a game that we totally ignored.” — Robert Krulwich (01:53)
• Tic Tac Toe as a Childhood Rite of Passage:
  Ian Frazier discusses how mastering the basic tic tac toe draw is a developmental milestone, leading to early boredom.
  • “You know how to get a draw in every tic tac toe game. And you learn that at about age maybe six…I would say I was a grandmaster.” — Ian Frazier (02:17, 02:49)

2. Ian Frazier's Siberian Discovery (03:10–06:22)

• Learning the Limits of Universality:
  On a trip to far eastern Russia, Ian tries to bond with Igor, a local boy, over tic tac toe—only to find the child has never heard of it.
  • “He had no idea what it was. Wow.” — Ian Frazier (04:56)
• Becoming the Tic Tac Toe Grandmaster (Again):
  Ian enjoys the unmatched thrill of playing someone new to the game, recalling the joys and guilt of “clobbering” someone less experienced.
  • “It’s really fun to play tic tac toe with someone who doesn’t know how because you’re just walking all over them…Technically, it was not fair.” — Ian Frazier (05:15, 05:40)
• Surprised to Find the Game 'Unknown':
  Ian asserts that, as far as he knows, tic tac toe is largely unknown in Russia, particularly in the far east and among the people he encountered.
  • “As far as I know, this game is unknown in Russia. And I’ve asked Russian friends.” — Ian Frazier (06:35)

3. Crowdsourcing the Global Map (07:46–11:34)

• The Idea:
  The hosts launch a crowd-sourced attempt to discover where tic tac toe is or isn't played by inviting listeners worldwide to survey people in their countries.
  • “This could be one of these crowdsourcing opportunities. We could ask people to help map it for us.” — Jad Abumrad (07:46)
• Initial Results—Surprising Gaps:
  First, the team finds that people in many countries (Japan, Argentina, Ireland, Turkey, Croatia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Iran) have never heard of "tic tac toe".
  • “Japan? No.” — Field Reporter (09:21)
  • “Argentina? No.” — Jad Abumrad (09:27)
• The Twist—It’s in the Name:
  When the grid is drawn and the rules explained, nearly everyone instantly recognizes the game—just under a different name.
  • “Once people saw the grid with the X’s and O’s, they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, we know that game. Of course. We just don’t call it tic tac toe.’” — Jad Abumrad (10:49)
• International Names for the Game:
  • Turkey: XO/XO
  • Serbia: Iksox
  • Peru: Michi
  • England/Ireland: Noughts and Crosses
  • Switzerland (French): Mor Pien
  • Poland: Ku ko ikzet
  • Argentina: Tatet
  • Costa Rica, Netherlands, Iran, Croatia: Gato
    • “’What’s the name in Peru?’ ‘Michi.’” — Field Reporter & Jad Abumrad (11:10)
    • “In England, which word is it called?” — Jad Abumrad (11:18) / “Noughts and crosses.” — Ian Frazier (11:18)

4. Debunking the Myth of Tic Tac Toe-Less Russia (12:24–13:15)

• A Flawed Assumption Comes Home:
  Shortly after his appearance on Radiolab, Ian learns from Russian partygoers that the game is actually known as “Kreshky Nolski” (crosses and zeros) in Russia, shattering his exotic claim.
  • “And I asked, and they said, yes, of course there’s tic tac toe…I said, wow. Everybody told me to. And they said, yeah, sure, everybody knows it. A friend even told me the name of it. It’s Kreshky Nolski, which is like crosses and zero.” — Ian Frazier (12:45)
  • “And he said, yeah, it’s well known. And the entire thing fell to the ground at that point, my dream of tic tac toe conquest.” — Ian Frazier (13:03)
  • “So sorry…I based this on insufficient data, and it’s completely wrong...But that was my…the limit of my conquest.” — Ian Frazier (13:12)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “You know how to get a draw in every tic tac toe game...it's just formality.”
  — Ian Frazier (02:17)

• “It’s sort of a developmental milestone, gaming-wise.”
  — Jad Abumrad (02:35)

• “It’s really fun to play tic tac toe with someone who doesn’t know how...”
  — Ian Frazier (05:15)

• “How wide is the shadow of non tic tac toe?”
  — Robert Krulwich (07:27)

• “Once people saw the grid with the Xs and Os, they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we know that game...we just don’t call it tic tac toe.’”
  — Jad Abumrad (10:49)

• “My dream of tic tac toe conquest...the entire thing fell to the ground at that point.”
  — Ian Frazier (13:00)

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Notable Segment Timestamps

• Classic Tic Tac Toe Boredom: 02:11–02:52
• Siberian Tic Tac Toe Encounter: 03:22–05:40
• Crowdsourcing International Knowledge: 07:46–11:34
• Language Barrier—Name Recognition: 10:24–11:34
• Debunked: Tic Tac Toe in Russia Exists: 12:24–13:12

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Tone & Original Speaker Flavor

The episode blends gentle skepticism, international adventure, childlike wonder, and investigative humor. The hosts and Ian Frazier maintain a self-effacing, lightly comic tone, poking fun both at themselves and at the idea of subtle cultural imperialism through children's games. The crowd-sourcing responses add personality and authenticity, while the final truth—tic tac toe is, essentially, everywhere—lands with both humility and delight.

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Summary: For the Uninitiated

"Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom" is a whimsical, globe-trotting inquiry into whether the simple game of tic tac toe has conquered the world—only to discover that while the game’s grid and rules are nearly universal, the name varies wildly by country and language. Listeners are treated to the small but revealing joys found in international communication, translation, and the sometimes embarrassing pitfalls of presuming your local childhood is the world’s childhood. Ultimately, tic tac toe (or noughts and crosses, or Michi, or XO, or Kreshky Nolski…) seems to have already made “three in a row” across much of the planet.

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Transcript

[Robert Krulwich]

Diego black Friday at the home depot. En la tienda oper Internet lote pierdas, Black Friday and the Home Depot.

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[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

All right.

[National Forest Foundation Announcer]

Okay.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

All right.

[Ian Frazier]

You're listening to Radiolab. Radiolab shorts from WNYC.

[Jad Abumrad]

And npr. Are we? Are we? I think we are.

[Robert Krulwich]

Maybe you have to get in closer.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ian Frazier]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

We should do the thing. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krolwick.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, the podcast.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Can you just tell us who you are?

[Ian Frazier]

Oh, well, I don't believe I'm going to reveal that.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we're going to start today's podcast with this international man of mystery.

[Jad Abumrad]

Who are you really?

[Ian Frazier]

No, I'm Ian Frazier.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ian is a writer for the New Yorker magazine, and he's written a bunch.

[Ian Frazier]

Of wonderful books, Travels in Siberia, and other books of nonfiction and humor.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we had Ian come to visit us because we were working together on a show about games which we just aired.

[Jad Abumrad]

And in that show, we.

[Robert Krulwich]

We ended up talking about baseball, football, basketball, checkers, chess. But the incident there was a game that we totally ignored.

[Ian Frazier]

Tic tac toe. Tic tac toe. Tic tac toe. Tic tac toe.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Tic tac toe. Tic tac toe.

[Ian Frazier]

Yeah. Tic tac toe.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right, so what's the deal with you and tic tac toe? I mean, you learned it at age 5, I'm assuming, like everybody.

[Ian Frazier]

Exactly like everybody else, of course. But I mean, as you get older, it's one of the first sort of levels of sophistication that you reach is that you know how to get a draw in every tic tac toe game. And you learn that at about age maybe six, I would say. And after that, it's just formality.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's sort of a developmental milestone, gaming wise.

[Ian Frazier]

It is, it is. But when you realize you're allowed to.

[Robert Krulwich]

Be sophisticatedly bored with the game, right.

[Ian Frazier]

And you go, oh, yes, I'm very good at that.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you reached the mature age of 6 and achieved a certain amount of.

[Ian Frazier]

Tic tac toe sophistication. I would say I was a grandmaster.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. But the problem is when you get to that grandmaster point, everybody else is a grandmaster too. And so everything is a draw and the game basically dies.

[Ian Frazier]

Right.

[Robert Krulwich]

And so like the rest of us, Ian stopped playing tic tac toe. But then when he was well into his middle life, you might say, oh.

[Ian Frazier]

This would have been in. This would have been about 10 years.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ago, he ran into something that made him think, well, maybe tic tac toe can still do something for me.

[Ian Frazier]

Right, right.

[Jad Abumrad]

What happened?

[Ian Frazier]

Well, I went to Russia and I traveled all over and I was in Chukotka, which is the part of the Russian Far east opposite Alaska. It's not a great distance, but it's an enormous distance in terms of culture. And at that time, my Russian language was very weak. And I was staying with this a young couple who had a six year old son named Igor. And because of the level of my language, I got along very well with preschool children and elementary school teachers.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hello, I am a student.

[Ian Frazier]

Right. And that didn't seem like ridiculous to a six year old. It seemed great. And he actually could speak some English. He had like about eight or 10 words. And the first thing Igor said to me was, how do you do? And he was just incredibly cute and a nice kid. And his shirts, you know, Russian kids shirts are buttoned up at the neck like that. And he was very, very serious. And so we were just hanging out and I was able to talk to him.

[Robert Krulwich]

And then on a whim, really, he.

[Ian Frazier]

Said, I said, well, let's play tic tac toe.

[Jad Abumrad]

And how did you get that idea?

[Ian Frazier]

Yeah, because it was just something to do with a kid. I don't even remember how we got that idea. But we were just sitting around and I explained the game to him and he had never heard of it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you drew the classic shape of the tic tac toe thing to this boy and he stares at it and says, so what's this, like some kind of cross or what? He didn't know what it was.

[Ian Frazier]

He had no idea what it was. Wow. And I just showed him by drawing how you do this X's and O's. And he picked it up. I mean, he understood what it was. And then we started playing and he very quickly got the principal. But I, to be honest, was clobbering him.

[Robert Krulwich]

Was there a certain kind of joy?

[Ian Frazier]

Just like, uh, that's not where the O goes. And then there's three X's, pal, you're out of here. And he would be quite crushed. Oh, no, I lost it. But it's really fun to play tic tac toe with someone who doesn't know how because you're just walking all over them and just putting X's and O's, X's. Is this fair?

[Robert Krulwich]

I mean, it was something.

[Ian Frazier]

Okay, okay, technically, it was not fair.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, define the word clobbering.

[Ian Frazier]

Are you talking, like, gains or game after game? And it didn't take very many moves for me to win, so I stayed with them before we made this trip into the tundra. And we went out into the tundra. We were there for a week or 10 days or something, and then I came back and stayed with him again. I do not believe he had been playing tic tac toe in my absence, but somehow he had gotten better. And so we had very, very ordinary and frustrating games. From my point of view, as we came back, I didn't win as readily at all. I didn't lose.

[Robert Krulwich]

But did you feel a slight urge to go to the nearby school, find.

[Ian Frazier]

New father Siberian tic tac toe hustler?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's what I'm saying.

[Ian Frazier]

Was how in elementary schools, of course, was how I paid for several years. I paid for my New York City apartment, but I later checked and listeners may contradict me. But as far as I know, this game is unknown in Russia. And I've asked Russian friends.

[Jad Abumrad]

Unknown. Completely unknown. Completely six years old and up and up.

[Robert Krulwich]

I would say in eastern Russia, in deep Siberian.

[Ian Frazier]

Well, I was in deep Siberia. But in the cities, I have not met anybody who knows this. Moscow, you want to Moscow, not Moscow. I've asked. I didn't go around these cities and say, do you know tic tac toe?

[Robert Krulwich]

I mean, what if it didn't get to Minsk?

[Jad Abumrad]

So finish that sentence.

[Robert Krulwich]

How wide is the shadow of non tic tac toe? We can establish that it's in eastern Russia. Maybe you could go to Japan and they wouldn't know how to play it. I mean, I don't know.

[Ian Frazier]

Well, it would be interesting just to find out where tic tac toe is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Elsewhere and where it isn't.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Ian Frazier]

Not that I'm gonna do it myself.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, no, no.

[Jad Abumrad]

This could be one of these crowdsourcing opportunities.

[Ian Frazier]

Why is that?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, we could ask people to help map it for us. Cause, like, what if there are whole corners of the globe that are virginal territory?

[Robert Krulwich]

So you could go to playgrounds and you could, like, walk in and say, hey, Kids, smoosh them.

[Jad Abumrad]

Come here.

[Robert Krulwich]

So we decided to test this proposition.

[Jad Abumrad]

After we talked to Ian, we put a call on our Facebook page asking for people to help us make a map. And we got responses.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Hello, I am coming to you from Gwangju, South Korea. Actually, lots in the north of Iran, near the Caspian Sea. Zagreb, Croatia. Poznan, Poland. Istanbul, Turkey.

[Robert Krulwich]

Kosti, New Zealand.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

The Philippines.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm here in Seattle, Washington.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Costa Rica. The Netherlands. Argentina, Caribbean. Namibia.

[Jad Abumrad]

Japan.

[Robert Krulwich]

Dublin, Ireland. The outskirts of Aarhus, Denmark.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

It's a typically hot day here in Dubai.

[Jad Abumrad]

Instructions are pretty simple. Grab a cell phone. Whatever you shot that can record, go out.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Now, let's get on with our business.

[Jad Abumrad]

And take a survey.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

So I think we found our first victim. Here we have two nice people walking by. Hello, sir.

[Robert Krulwich]

Have you heard of.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

A game called tic tac toe? Who here has ever heard of the game Tic Tac to?

[Jad Abumrad]

So here are the results which may surprise you. We'll go country by country. Everybody interviewed a lot of people. So what you will hear is. Representative. We'll start with Japan.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Do you know tic tac toe? Tic tac toe.

[Jad Abumrad]

Know this game? No. No. Japan? No.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

No. No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Argentina? No.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

She doesn't know. No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Ireland? No.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do you know what it is, sir?

[Jad Abumrad]

No.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

No one knows how to play tic tac toe?

[Jad Abumrad]

Na. Media. Yes, sir. Nope.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Switzerland? No. Tic tac toe. Turkey?

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Croatia?

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

New Zealand?

[National Forest Foundation Announcer]

Tic tac toe.

[Ian Frazier]

Is it a dance?

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

No, it's a game. Have you. So you've never played tic tac toe?

[Ian Frazier]

I haven't.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

No.

[Ian Frazier]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Iran.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

The answer is no.

[Jad Abumrad]

So amazingly, it seemed like huge chunks of the globe do not know tic tac toe. So a tic tac toe hustler could clean up Cha Ching or forget hustling. Maybe you just to believe there are still some blank spots left on the globe. Well, here you are. Yes. But just to be safe, we asked everybody to go out, not just with their cell phones, but with a pen and a paper. So that when someone says no, they could draw them the grid. Just to be certain.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Let me show you. Go. We have X's and we have O's and like this. This or this. So if I am X and then it's your turn, you try to stop me. And you have to get three in a row.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this is when the answers changed.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

So I'll say O. So X, then X. Maru bucks again. Oh, you know that.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. Once people saw the grid with the X's and O's, they were like, oh, yeah, we know that game. Of course. We just don't call it tic tac toe.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

The game has a different name. In Turkish.

[Shopify Advertiser]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

In Turkish, it's called xo xo X. In Serbia, iksox.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

What's the name in Peru?

[Jad Abumrad]

Michi. Peru, it's Michi. In South Korea, what do you call it? And in England, which word is it called?

[Ian Frazier]

Noughts and crosses.

[Robert Krulwich]

Nooks and crosses.

[Jad Abumrad]

Knots and crosses. Crosses, which is also what they call it in Ireland, and we call it noughts and crosses. New Zealand. Now in Switzerland, Mor Pien.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

It's known in the French language.

[Jad Abumrad]

That is what they call it in Polish.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Ku ko ikzet.

[Jad Abumrad]

Kuko exet.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Does everybody in Poland know how to play this?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. And to round things out, in Argentina, they call it tatet. In the Netherlands, Iran, Croatia, and in Costa Rica, Gato, let's take a little.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Break and look at our notes, see where we stand so far.

[Robert Krulwich]

Jen, I'm beginning to get this feeling.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Seven people interviewed, seven knew it.

[Robert Krulwich]

That our dreams of glory.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

They all know what TikTok is.

[Robert Krulwich]

That we were gonna, you know, we were gonna be the Genghis Khans of tic tac toe.

[Jad Abumrad]

And it just may not be supported by the data.

[Ian Frazier]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

But we got Russia, right?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Ian Frazier. Hi.

[Ian Frazier]

This is Soren.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

I work with Robert.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't know if we have Russia, actually, because as we were conducting our international tic tac toe survey, I got a note from Ian. It looked like an oh, note. So I called him up, and he told me that shortly after we talked to him that first time, it was.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Maybe even the same day, he was.

[Robert Krulwich]

At a party, and there were some.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Russians, and I just thought, okay, let me just make sure about this. And I asked, and they said, yes, of course there's tic tac toe. And I said, wow. Everybody told me to. And they said, yeah, sure, everybody knows it. A friend even told me the name of it. It's Kreshky Nolski, which is like process and zero. And he said, yeah, it's well known. And the entire thing fell to the ground. At that point, my dream of tic tac toe conquest. So sorry. I'm sorry. I based this on insufficient data, and it's completely wrong. It's not completely wrong, because I did encounter, you know, some people who didn't know, and this one kid who I really, I can promise you, I just beat the pants off of in tic tac toe. He had no idea. But that was my the limit of my conquest. Tic Tac toe. We got three in a row. You, me and love tic tac toe. So we got three in a row and what could be more better?

[Robert Krulwich]

Ian Fraser is the author of Travels in Siberia and a whole bunch of wonderful books. For more information, go to our website.

[Jad Abumrad]

Radiolab.org oh, and before we go, thank you, thank you, thank you to our international tic tac toe surveyors.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Alberto Arias, Chris Rollins. Seroge Ami, Chris Lena, Salvador Vasquez, Krista Hans, Tarek, Yasin. My name is Mara. Chelsea Unru. This is Myra.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Marianne. And this is Sponsor.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is Spanky.

[Ian Frazier]

Nick Glastonbury.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

My name is Ximena. That baseman. My name is Ateluxa. Mr. Gimo. And my name is Pedram Rafai.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Grillwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks for listening.

[Field Reporter / Interviewer]

Big beautiful game Art We Black the name of Tic Tac. Message 18. Hi, this is Chris Wilkinson, Radiolab listener from South Bend, Indiana, calling with the credits. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail]. thanks. Have a good day.

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