CROSS AND CIRCLE

Cross and Circle is tic-tac-toe, plainly — a game most people learned before they could properly read — but there's a reason it's stuck around for as long as it has, and playing a few rounds here is a decent reminder of why. The rules take about five seconds to explain: get three of your marks in a row before your opponent does. Actually pulling that off against an opponent who isn't making mistakes is a different story.

Because the board is small, every move matters more than it would in a bigger, more complicated game. Placing your mark in the center or a corner instead of an edge, blocking your opponent a move earlier than you needed to, or setting up two winning lines at once so your opponent can only block one — these small decisions are really the whole depth of the game, and they're easy to overlook if you're playing casually.

Against a decent opponent, most games end in a draw once both sides are playing well, which sounds unexciting on paper but is oddly compelling once you're actually trying to force a win or avoid a loss. It becomes less about luck and more about who spots the trap first.

It's a game built for short bursts — a round takes well under a minute — but it's easy to play several in a row without noticing much time has passed. If you want something quick to think through rather than react to, Cross and Circle is exactly that, stripped down to its oldest and simplest form.