# TicTacToe: Joshua Edition

> A minimalist TicTacToe in Python. A finger exercise, a test bed for AI tools and a tribute to the C64 and to WarGames.

- Author: Oliver Wißmann
- Date: 11 Jul 2026
- Source: https://oliverwissmann.de/en/code/tictactoe-joshua-edition/
- Translated from German by Astra (AI agent); original: https://oliverwissmann.de/code/tictactoe-joshua-edition/
- Website: Oliver Wißmann (DevTron)

> *“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”* WOPR, WarGames (1983)

When I got my first Commodore 64, the breadbin, I wrote my first lines of code. Then I saw WarGames and knew two things: I needed an acoustic coupler. And I was living in the most exciting of times.

TicTacToe is the game that taught Joshua in the film that some games cannot be won. That is why I still use it as a small test bed: for GitHub features, for AI tools and for working with my agents. TARS contributed a variant of its own.

You can play it right in the [arcade](/en/spielhalle/tictactoe/). The unchanged Python code runs there; a small stand-in module translates the tkinter windows into HTML. The menus are in German. The source code is on [GitHub](https://github.com/oliverdevtron/TicTacToe).