DIAGRAM OF TEE-TAH-TOE BOARD.
Excluded from the plays of the older fellows, Jack drew around him a circle of small boys, who were always glad to be amused with the stories of hunting, fishing, and frontier adventure that he had heard from old pioneers on Wildcat Creek. Sometimes he played “tee-tah-toe, three in a row,” with the girls, using a slate and pencil in a way well known to all school-children. And he also showed them a better kind of “tee-tah-toe,” learned on the Wildcat, and which may have been in the first place an Indian game, as it is played with grains of Indian corn. A piece of board is grooved with a jack-knife in the manner shown in the diagram.
One player has three red or yellow grains of corn, and the other an equal number of white ones. The player who won the last game has the “go”—that is, he first puts down a grain of corn at any place where the lines intersect, but usually in the middle, as that is the best point. Then the other player puts down one, and so on until all are down. After this, the players move alternately along any of the lines, in any direction, to the next intersection, provided it is not already occupied. The one who first succeeds in getting his three grains in a row wins the point, and the board is cleared for a new start. As there are always three vacant points, and as the rows may be formed in any direction along any of the lines, the game gives a chance for more variety of combinations than one would expect from its appearance.
JACK AMUSING THE SMALL BOYS WITH STORIES OF HUNTING, FISHING, AND FRONTIER ADVENTURE.
Jack had also an arithmetical puzzle which he had learned from his father, and which many of the readers of this story will know, perhaps.
“Set down any number, without letting me know what it is,” said he to Joanna Merwin.
She set down a number.
“Now add twelve and multiply by two.”