What Europe Calls Tic-Tac-Toe
It is a game that we all played but who knew it had so many names?
Overview
It is a game that we all played but who knew it had so many names?
This interactive map shows what European languages call tic-tac-toe — sometimes a plain description of the game, sometimes an old metaphor, and sometimes just the sounds children chant while they play. Hover or tab to any label to see the name in its own language, the meaning group it falls into, and the sources it came from.
Methodology
The names were compiled by hand into a single sourced table, one row per language or regional
variant. Each row records the language, the name as it is written locally, an English gloss,
a meaning group, and its citations; that table ships with the map as data.json, so every
label on the map can be traced back to where it came from. Most rows rest on dictionaries and
lexicographic databases. A handful of regional names are attested only by game sites or
app listings — those are marked in the sources and should be read as weaker evidence.
The base map is a derivative of the public-domain Simplified Languages of Europe map from
Wikimedia Commons. The original language-region outlines are kept and each region’s label is
replaced with the English gloss of its tic-tac-toe name, with colour encoding the meaning
group. The interactive view is static HTML and JavaScript reading that same data.json.
French morpion is also the name of a different pencil game (join five, or morpion solitaire); this map follows everyday use for tic-tac-toe.
Two caveats are worth stating plainly. Sorting names into meaning groups is a judgement call, not a property of the data — luffarschack is grouped as a chess metaphor, but a case could be made for reading it as a joke about vagrancy. And in several countries the game people actually play is a five-in-a-row variant whose name carries over when it is played on a 3×3 grid, so some labels name the family of games rather than the 3×3 grid specifically.
Findings
- Three-in-a-row is widespread (Spanish tres en raya, German Drei gewinnt, Italian tris); German also uses Kreis und Kreuz (circle and cross).
- Chess metaphors appear in several Germanic languages (Swedish luffarschack, Bavarian Dodelschach).
- Animal and food names turn up too (Irish an madra rua agus an ghé, Dutch boter, kaas en eieren).
- Regional variants are noted in the dataset where sources support them (e.g. Occitan arrengats, Orkney Scots trip-trap-truisky).
- The map is not yet complete. Thirty-one language regions carry an outline but no name recorded yet — among them Slovak, Maltese, Albanian, Macedonian, Breton, Cornish, Luxembourgish, West Frisian, Faroese and Northern Sami. They are left blank rather than guessed at.
Takeaways
A childhood grid game turns out to be a compact map of how languages name the same thing differently.
References
- Wikimedia Commons: Simplified Languages of Europe map.svg
- Foclóir.ie — tic-tac-toe (Irish)
- Cambridge Dictionary — morpion (French)
- Join five (also morpion solitaire)
- Wiktionary — tic-tac-toe
- Dictionary of the Scots Language
Data Sources
Ratings use the ODON Open Data Maturity Model (ODMM).
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Wiktionary — tic-tac-toe entries across languages
Legal L4 CC BY-SA text, free to reuse with attribution. The single largest source here, supplying 11 of the 49 names. L4.
Technical T2 Dictionary entries as web pages. A machine-readable dump exists, but the names were read and transcribed by hand rather than parsed from it. T2.
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Wikipedia language editions (German, Basque, Croatian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Norwegian, English)
Legal L4 CC BY-SA text, free reuse with attribution. L4.
Technical T2 Encyclopaedic prose; the local name was transcribed by hand from each language edition. T2.
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Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL)
Legal L2 Free to consult online; copyright held by Scottish Language Dictionaries, with no open licence for reuse. Source of five regional Scots variants. L2.
Technical T2 Searchable web entries (HTML); no structured download offered. T2.
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Glosbe multilingual dictionary
Legal L2 Proprietary aggregator. Readable without charge, but the compiled entries carry no open licence. Five names. L2.
Technical T2 Web entries only; the public API is not open-licensed. T2.
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Cambridge Dictionary
Legal L2 Cambridge University Press, all rights reserved. Free to read, not licensed for reuse. L2.
Technical T2 Web entries (HTML); no structured download. T2.
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National and reference dictionaries (Foclóir.ie, Collins, CNRTL, WordReference, dict.cc, DictZone, OpenRussian)
Legal L2 Each is free to consult and each reserves its rights; none carries an open licence. Used for one or two names apiece. L2.
Technical T2 Web entries (HTML); transcribed by hand. T2.
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Usage attestations — game sites, app listings and regional culture pages
Legal L1 Commercial and community pages (app-store listings, itch.io, regional game and culture sites) with no licence statement at all. Cited as evidence that a name is used, not as lexicographic authority. L1.
Technical T1 Unstructured web pages, some of them storefront listings; no metadata, no download, and no guarantee of permanence. T1.
Tools Used
- Python
- JavaScript
- SVG