I’ve come up with an idea for a new esolang, called “Naughts and Crosses”. It’s an esolang based on tic-tac-toe, with a few twists.
To begin, you’ll need eight symbols, one for each of the usual tic-tac-toe symbols. I’ll be using the Unicode codepoints U+2620 (♠), U+2621 (♥), U+2622 (♣), U+2623 (♦), U+2624 (♀), U+2625 (♂), U+2626 (♥), and U+2627 (♣). Pity we can’t use the actual tic-tac-toe symbols, but it’s not really an issue.
When tic-tac-toe is first set up, the board consists of nine positions (3x3), and two players. The first player, the naughts player, puts a character at the center of each of the nine positions. The second player, the crosses player, must then “connect”, i.e., put a symbol in each of the positions adjacent to the center positions. A position is adjacent to another position if it shares a side with it. The naughts player then puts a symbol on all positions the crosses player didn’t fill in.
It’s sort of like noughts and crosses, except the naughts player gets to play first.
Here’s a cool thing, though: the naughts player, by placing symbols in the center positions, can block off any or all of the positions. These positions are called “holes”. They can be blocked off so that the crosses player can’t make a move in them. If a hole is blocked off, it’s unoccupied.