How to play Tic-Tac-Toe

Goaler's Tic-Tac-Toe is a football grid. Three clubs or countries run across the top of the board and three down the side. Every one of the nine cells is the meeting point of a row and a column, and your job is to name a player who belongs to both: a club he played for, or a country he played for. Fill all nine and you have a full board.

The board

A header is either a club, shown as a shirt in its colours, or a nation, shown as its flag. Rows and columns can mix the two, so one cell might ask for a player who played for Arsenal and for Brazil, and the next for a player who played for both Juventus and Real Madrid. Two nations never meet in the same cell, and countries that no longer exist, such as Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, are never headers.

Naming a player

Type any part of a name in the box under the board and pick the player from the list. The list shows each player's birth year, and where two players share a name and a year, his country or first club too, so you always know which one you are choosing. Accents don't matter, and one typo in a longer word is forgiven.

• If the player fits exactly one open cell, he is placed there at once.
• If he fits several open cells, those cells light up and you tap the one you want (or cancel).
• If he fits no open cell, you are told so and the clock keeps running.
• Each player can be used only once on a board.

What counts as an answer

"Played for" means at least one senior appearance. Loans count. A spell with no appearances, or a youth spell that ended before a player's senior debut, does not. For a nation, the player needs to have been capped by it at senior level; caps for a former state do not carry over to its successor, so a cap for Yugoslavia is not a cap for Serbia. Wartime guest spells and clubs that merged into a new club are not answers either. Players need a page on enough language editions of Wikipedia to be in the game, which keeps the list to footballers people can reasonably know.

The score, out of 1,000

• 80 points for every correct cell, up to 720.
• Up to 20 more per cell for a rare pick, up to 180. The less known your player, and the more better-known answers the cell had, the more you earn. Naming the most famous answer earns no rarity points; that is the price of the easy pick. A pick worth 12 or more rarity points turns its sticker orange.
• A time bonus of up to 100. It is scaled by how many cells you filled, stays full for the first two and a half minutes, then shrinks to zero at seven and a half minutes.

You can finish at any time with Finish now. Empty cells score nothing, so finishing early only makes sense when you are stuck and the time bonus is still worth keeping. The clock is kept on Goaler's server and starts when you press Start, not when the page opens.

Easy, Medium and Hard

Easy boards use the biggest clubs and the biggest football nations, and every cell has several famous answers, so a fan who watches the big matches should fill most of the board. Medium widens the pool to more clubs from the top leagues and more nations. Hard keeps recognisable clubs and nations but pairs them in rare combinations, where only a few well-known players fit. Every Hard cell still has an answer a well-informed fan can find.

Challenging a friend

When you finish, send the link. Your friend gets exactly the same board and the same clock, and the higher score wins; an equal score is decided by time, to the hundredth of a second. Anyone you send the link to can play it, and each of them is compared with you. Your challenge page shows who played, who beat you and who you beat, and Revenge sends a fresh board back.

Tips

• Start with the cells you are sure of: a fast, safe board often beats a slow, clever one.
• Think of players who moved a lot: journeymen fit many cells.
• For a nation and a club, think of that country's players in that league in a given decade.
• Save your rare picks for cells where you know two answers and can afford to choose the less famous one.

Questions about the rules, the data or your games are answered in the FAQ.