TicTacToe (PuzzleMadness)

About TicTacToe (PuzzleMadness)

PuzzleMadness's TicTacToe is not the two-player game but a logic grid, also known as Binairo or Takuzu. You fill an even-sized grid with X and O. No row or column may have three of the same symbol in a row, every row and column has as many Xs as Os, and no two rows (or two columns) may be the same.

The daily page opens today's puzzle on its own, and its title carries the date (on 3 October 2026 it read "Daily Medium TicTacToe Puzzle for Saturday 3rd October 2026"). There is a separate dated puzzle for each size: Small, Medium, Large and Mixed. Past days stay in the archive, so a missed puzzle can be played later, and there is a print version and an image download of the grid. PuzzleMadness does not publish solutions: the site tells you when you have finished a grid correctly or made a mistake. Each completed puzzle adds to your total on the TicTacToe monthly and all-time leaderboards, where only your best score on any one puzzle counts.

Two rules open almost every grid: two equal symbols side by side must be capped by the other symbol at both ends, and a gap between two equal symbols must be the other symbol. Once a line has its full count of one symbol, the rest of it is the other. The no-identical-lines rule settles the last few squares.

PuzzleMadness is a British puzzle site with dozens of daily puzzle types in the browser, from many sudoku variants to logic grids such as Nurikabe, Hashi and Slitherlink. It is free to play and carries ads. A free account keeps track of the puzzles you have finished and puts your name on the leaderboards, and the badges next to usernames mark how many puzzles a player has completed.

How to play TicTacToe (PuzzleMadness)

1. Open the day's TicTacToe page and choose Small, Medium, Large or Mixed.
2. Where two Xs or two Os sit together, put the opposite symbol on each side.
3. Where one square sits between two equal symbols, fill it with the other symbol.
4. Balance each line and avoid identical rows or columns until the grid is full; the site marks it solved.

Screenshots

Tips

• Count symbols: half of each line is X and half is O.
• When a line is nearly full, compare it with completed lines so you do not copy one.
• Work the forced pairs and gaps across the whole grid before thinking harder.

Questions