A computer science teacher poses his students a problem.

"I want you write a computer program that plays tic-tac-toe legally and runs through ALL the possible combinations of the game, and finds out the total."

The students settle down to work..

An hour later, a student gets up and proclaims "I've got it! The number of possible combinations in a game is 344,242."

At which point another student quickly replies, "I haven't finished yet, but I'm sure Fred made a mistake in his program."

Why?

(Tic Tac Toe = Noughts and Crosses)

The all possible combinations of the game is clearly divisible by 4, so tsaying that the number is 344,242 is erroneous.

Posted by K Sengupta on 2023-07-18 23:49:31