The Universe and Tic-Tac-Toe

While teaching a computer class and demonstrating the use of hyperlinks in Power Point (TM) I attempted to give an example of using Power Point to play Tic-Tac-Toe fully realizing that this could take thousands of slides. There are limitations internal to Power Point that prevent this from becoming a fully operational project, at least without some substantial "fixes" to Power Point itself. Power Point has a limitation of between 5,000 and 10,000 keystrokes available for such hyperlinks. There are "fixes" and possible alternate solutions to this and these can be researched on the internet.

The main issue of concern to me, was more the question of "Can this be done at all?" if there were no such limitations and "What kind of features would I need to add to the writing to make this logical?" I explained to my class that going through the process teaches you other things.

One of the things that I learned was that there were limitations to Power Point, another thing learned was that I needed each slide to include a "Last Viewed" button, so that I could check how one hyperlink had send me to another slide, and I needed a coded area on each slide to describe the Tic-Tac-Toe board in terms of placement of the unique elements of no entry, an "X", or an "O" in various locations. Through the use of "Find" then, I could find out if I had already produced a slide with those unique characteristics.

When I reached almost 2000 slides, I was nearing the limit of hyperlinks, now it was time to stop, but an interesting concept had evolved. If you imagine a tennis ball wrapped in a Tic-Tac-Toe board pattern and all of the possible arrangements of Tic-Tac-Toe being inside the ball, then you in effect have the "Universe" of "Tic-Tac-Toe".

This Tic-Tac-Toe universe has a limited number of elements inside the ball and is somewhat like a model of our universe. Inside our universe we have a specific number of galzxies, stars, planets, moons, comets, and similar elements.

One of the great realiizations was how Power Point demonstrated how the Tic-Tac-Toe universe presentation folded back onto itself as previously constructed patterns would reappear and then be used to go in a different direction. (Note: The folding of our universe had been one possible theory of how our universe is constructed and evolving.)

The Tic-Tac-Toe universe is much smaller, but it is an interesting model for comparison. Our universe has galaxies that are spiral, irregular, globular, etc. and if we just consider the galactic elements, then it is more like the Tic-Tac-Toe universe.

It would be much easier to write a computer program to play Tic-Tac-Toe, but to write a Power Point presentation to play the game, was much more educational from my point of view. In my view many seemingly simple things can teach us so much more than we might have thought possible at first glance.

So that next time you play Tic-Tac-Toe at least consider, you are playing a game that has it's own little universe of possibilities.