These two Pacers fans might be the worst tic-tac-toe players in history

Liz Roscher
·Staff writer

Tic-tac-toe is one of the first games most people learn when they’re a kid, and that’s because it’s easy. You need to place your mark in three consecutive squares of a nine-square grid to win while alternating turns with your opponent. The game has been around for more than a millennium — versions were played in ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire.

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So maybe the question is: Can you forget how to play tic-tac-toe, one of the oldest and simplest games we have? Can you forget the point of the game, which is to win? Is that possible? Thanks to two Indiana Pacers fans who played an oversized version of the game on Wednesday night, we now know the answer is a resounding, “Yes, very much yes!”

Please feel free to take a moment to scream your frustration into a pillow or a paper bag, because what were those guys even doing? The easy answer is “playing tic-tac-toe” but were they really? The point of tic-tac-toe is to win, and neither one of them seemed like they wanted to do that! They kept trying to stop the other one from winning, and in the end they both lost. (It was ruled a tie, but let’s be honest: they both lost.)

The fans in the crowd knew what they were seeing, and they were not happy about it. You can hear them start to boo as the players take their third turn, as if they could tell that the game was going to end in the most infuriating and unsatisfying way possible.

Two Pacers fans played tic-tac-toe. It ended in a tie. No one was happy. (Screenshot)
Two Pacers fans played tic-tac-toe. It ended in a tie. No one was happy. (Screenshot)

Even the announcer guy was baffled. One of the players had a clear chance to win for multiple turns, and when he continually ignored that in favor of blocking his opponent, the announcer couldn’t contain himself and yelled “What are you doing!?”

Announcer guy, you are all of us.

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