2 of 2 Items .... Type: Game

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Everyone older than ten knows that there is a way to play tic-tac-toe so that you can never lose. Any game that can be played to a draw unless someone makes a newbie's mistake, is boring once you know the secret.

Let's look at this one and see if you can find a strategy for it:

Players alternate writing a number from 1 - 9 (once used, it’s dead). First one with a set of three numbers that sum to 15 wins.

Is there a guaranteed winning strategy for Player 1?
Is there a guaranteed winning strategy for Player 2?

How does his later comment help? "It’s equivalent to tic-tac-toe since any row/col/diagonal in a 3x3 magic square sums to 15, but more mathematically interesting."

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Join the dots with straight lines that don't cross. Your score is the sum of the products of the numbers joined.

What's the highest score possible?
Try to find the optimal pattern of numbers.
Variant: two players alternate drawing lines.




Scoring:



Daniel Wekselgreene ported this to Desmos:
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/60d6d0a26054b7f1edba1b48