Chapter 10

Example: Tic-Tac-Toe

Brian Harvey
University of California, Berkeley
Matthew Wright
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Now that you've learned about higher-order functions, we're going to look at a large
example that uses them extensively. Using the techniques you've learned so far, we're going
to write a program that plays perfect tic-tac-toe.
You can load our program into Scheme by typing
(load "ttt.scm")
(See Appendix A if this doesn't work for you.)
A Warning
Programs don't always come out right the first time. One of our goals in this chapter is to
show you how a program is developed, so we're presenting early versions of procedures.
These include some mistakes that we made, and also some after-the-fact simplifications to
make our explanations easier. If you type in these early versions, they won't work. We will
show you how we corrected these "bugs" and also will present a complete, correct version
at the end of the chapter.
To indicate the unfinished versions of procedures, we'll use comments like "first version" or
"not really part of game."
Technical Terms in Tic-Tac-Toe
We'll number the squares of the board this way:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

We'll call a partially filled-in board a "position."


o

x o
x

x

To the computer, the same position will be represented by the word __o_xox_x. The nine
letters of the word correspond to squares one through nine of the board. (We're thinking
ahead to the possibility of using item to extract the nth square of a given position.)
Thinking about the Program Structure
Our top-level procedure, ttt, will return the computer's next move given the current
position. It takes two arguments: the current position and whether the computer is playing
X or O. If the computer is O and the board looks like the one above, then we'd invoke ttt
like this:
(ttt '__o_xox_x 'o)
Here is a sample game:
> (ttt '____x____ 'o) ; Human goes first in square 5
1 ; Computer moves in square 1
> (ttt 'o__xx____ 'o) ; Human moves in square 4
6 ; Computer blocks in square 6
> (ttt 'o_xxxo___ 'o) ; Human moves in square 3
7 ; Computer blocks again
> (ttt 'o_xxxoox_ 'o)
2
This is not a complete game program! Later, when we talk about input and output, you'll
see how to write an interactive program that displays the board pictorially, asks the player
where to move, and so on. For now, we'll just write the strategy procedure that chooses the
next move. As a paying customer, you wouldn't be satisfied with this partial program, but
from the programmer's point of view, this is the more interesting part.
Let's plan the computer's strategy in English before we start writing a computer program.
How do you play tic-tac-toe? You have several strategy rules in your head, some of which
are more urgent than others. For example, if you can win on this move, then you just do it
without thinking about anything else. But if there isn't anything that immediate, you
consider less urgent questions, such as how this move might affect what happens two
moves later.
So we'll represent this set of rules by a giant cond expression:
(define (ttt position me) ;; first version
(cond ((i-can-win?)
(choose-winning-move))
((opponent-can-win?)
(block-opponent-win))
((i-can-win-next-time?)
(prepare-win))
(else (whatever))))
We're imagining many helper procedures. I-can-win? will look at the board and tell if the
computer has an immediate winning move. If so, choose-winning-move will find that
particular move. Opponent-can-win? returns true if the human player has an immediate
winning move. Block-opponent-win will return a move that prevents the computer's
opponent from winning, and so on.
We didn't actually start by writing this definition of ttt. The particular names of helper
procedures are just guesses, because we haven't yet planned the tic-tac-toe strategy in
detail. But we did know that this would be the overall structure of our program. This big
picture doesn't automatically tell us what to do next; different programmers might fill in the
details differently. But it's a framework to keep in mind during the rest of the job.
Our first practical step was to think about the data structures in our program. A data
structure is a way of organizing several pieces of information into a big chunk. For
example, a sentence is a data structure that combines several words in a sequence (that is, in
left-to-right order).
In the first, handwavy version of ttt, the strategy procedures like i-can-win? are called
with no arguments, but of course we knew they would need some information about the
board position. We began by thinking about how to represent that information within the
program.
The First Step: Triples
A person looking at a tic-tac-toe board looks at the rows, columns, and diagonals. The
question "do I have a winning move?" is equivalent to the question "are there three squares
in a line such that two of them are mine and the last one is blank?" In fact, nothing else
matters about the game besides these potential winning combinations.
There are eight potential winning combinations: three rows, three columns, and two
diagonals. Consider the combination containing the three squares 1, 5, and 9. If it contains
both an x and an o then nobody can win with this combination and there's nothing to think
about. But if it contains two xs and a free square, we're very interested in the combination.
What we want to know in particular is which square is free, since we want to move in that
square to win or block.
More generally, the only squares whose numbers we care about are the ones we might want
to move into, namely, the free ones. So the only interesting information about a square is
whether it has an x or an o, and if not, what its number is.
The information that 1, 5, 9 is a potential winning combination and the information that
square 1 contains an x, square 5 is empty, and square 9 contains another x can be combined
into the single word x5x. Looking at this word we can see immediately that there are two xs
in this "triple" and that the free square is square 5. So when we want to know about a three-
square combination, we will turn it into a triple of that form.
Here's a sample board position:


x o

x

o


and here is a sentence of all of its triples:
(1xo 4x6 o89 14o xx8 o69 1x9 oxo)
Take a minute to convince yourself that this sentence really does tell you everything you
need to know about the corresponding board position. Once our strategy procedure finds
the triples for a board position, it's never going to look at the original position again.
This technique of converting data from one form to another so that it can be manipulated
more easily is an important idea in computer science. There are really three representations
of the same thing. There's this picture:


x o

x

o


as well as the word _xo_x_o__ and the sentence (1xo 4x6 o89 14o xx8 o69 1x9 oxo).
All three of these formats have the same information but are convenient in different ways.
The pictorial form is convenient because it makes sense to the person who's playing tic-tac-
toe. Unfortunately, you can't type that picture into a computer, so we need a different
format, the word _xo_x_o__, which contains the contents of the nine squares in the picture,
but without the lines separating the squares and without the two-dimensional shape.
The third format, the sentence, is quite inconvenient for human beings. You'd never want to
think about a tic-tac-toe board that way yourself, because the sentence doesn't have the
visual simplicity that lets you take in a tic-tac-toe position at a glance. But the sentence of
triples is the most convenient representation for our program. Ttt will have to answer
questions like "can x win on the next move?" To do that, it will have to consider an
equivalent but more detailed question: "For each of the eight possible winning
combinations, can x complete that combination on the next move?" It doesn't really matter
whether a combination is a row or a column; what does matter is that each of the eight
combinations be readily available for inspection by the program. The sentence-of-triples
representation obscures part of the available information (which combination is where) to
emphasize another part (making the eight combinations explicit, instead of implicit in the
nine boxes of the diagram).
The representation of fractions as "mixed numerals," such as 2
1
/
3
, and as "improper
fractions," such as
7
/
3
, is a non-programming example of this idea about multiple
representations. A mixed numeral makes it easier for a person to tell how big the number is,
but an improper fraction makes arithmetic easier.
Finding the Triples
We said that we would combine the current board position with the numbers of the squares
in the eight potential winning combinations in order to compute the things we're calling
triples. That was our first task in writing the program.
Our program will start with this sentence of all the winning combinations:
(123 456 789 147 258 369 159 357)
and a position word such as _xo_x_o__; it will return a sentence of triples such as
(1xo 4x6 o89 14o xx8 o69 1x9 oxo)
All that's necessary is to replace some of the numbers with xs and os. This kind of word-by-
word translation in a sentence is a good job for every.
(define (find-triples position) ;; first version
(every substitute-triple '(123 456 789 147 258 369 159 357)))
We've made up a name substitute-triple for a procedure we haven't written yet. This is
perfectly OK, as long as we write it before we try to invoke find-triples. The
substitute-triple function will take three digits, such as 258, and return a triple, such as
2x8:
(define (substitute-triple combination) ;; first version
(every substitute-letter combination))
This procedure uses every to call substitute-letter on all three letters.
There's a small problem, though. Every always returns a sentence, and we want our triple
to be a word. For example, we want to turn the potential winning combination 258 into the
word 2x8, but every would return the sentence (2 x 8). So here's our next version of
substitute-triple:
(define (substitute-triple combination) ;; second version
(accumulate word (every substitute-letter combination)))
Substitute-letter knows that letter number 3 of the word that represents the board
corresponds to the contents of square 3 of the board. This means that it can just call item
with the given square number and the board to find out what's in that square. If it's empty,
we return the square number itself; otherwise we return the contents of the square.
(define (substitute-letter square) ;; first version
(if (equal? '_ (item square position))
square
(item square position)))
Whoops! Do you see the problem?
> (substitute-letter 5)
ERROR: Variable POSITION is unbound.
Using Every with Two-Argument Procedures
Our procedure only takes one argument, square, but it needs to know the position so it can
find out what's in the given square. So here's the real substitute-letter:
(define (substitute-letter square position)
(if (equal? '_ (item square position))
square
(item square position)))

> (substitute-letter 5 '_xo_x_o__)
X

> (substitute-letter 8 '_xo_x_o__)
8
Now substitute-letter can do its job, since it has access to the position. But we'll have
to modify substitute-triple to invoke substitute-letter with two arguments.
This is a little tricky. Let's look again at the way we're using substitute-letter inside
substitute-triple:
(define (substitute-triple combination) ;; second version again
(accumulate word (every substitute-letter combination)))
By giving substitute-letter another argument, we have made this formerly correct
procedure incorrect. The first argument to every must be a function of one argument, not
two. This is exactly the kind of situation in which lambda can help us: We have a function
of two arguments, and we need a function of one argument that does the same thing, but
with one of the arguments fixed.
The procedure returned by
(lambda (square) (substitute-letter square position))
does exactly the right thing; it takes a square as its argument and returns the contents of the
position at that square.
Here's the final version of substitute-triple:
(define (substitute-triple combination position)
(accumulate word
(every (lambda (square)
(substitute-letter square position))
combination)))

> (substitute-triple 456 '_xo_x_o__)
"4X6"

> (substitute-triple 147 '_xo_x_o__)
"14O"

> (substitute-triple 357 '_xo_x_o__)
OXO
As you can see, Scheme prints some of these words with double-quote marks. The rule is
that a word that isn't a number but begins with a digit must be double-quoted. But in the
finished program we're not going to print such words at all; we're just showing you the
working of a helper procedure. Similarly, in this chapter we'll show direct invocations of
helper procedures in which some of the arguments are strings, but a user of the overall
program won't have to use this notation.
We've fixed the substitute-letter problem by giving substitute-triple an extra
argument, so we're going to have to go through the same process with find-triples.
Here's the right version:
(define (find-triples position)
(every (lambda (comb) (substitute-triple comb position))
'(123 456 789 147 258 369 159 357)))
It's the same trick. Substitute-triple is a procedure of two arguments. We use lambda
to transform it into a procedure of one argument for use with every.
We've now finished find-triples, one of the most important procedures in the game.
> (find-triples '_xo_x_o__)
("1XO" "4X6" O89 "14O" XX8 O69 "1X9" OXO)

> (find-triples 'x_____oxo)
(X23 456 OXO X4O "25X" "36O" X5O "35O")
Here again are the jobs of all three procedures we've written so far:
Substitute-letter
finds the letter in a single square.
Substitute-triple
finds all three leters corresponding to three squares.
Find-triples
finds all the letters in all eight winning combinations.
We've done all this because we think that the rest of the program can use the triples we've
computed as data. So we'll just compute the triples once for all the other procedures to use:
(define (ttt position me)
(ttt-choose (find-triples position) me))

(define (ttt-choose triples me) ;; first version
(cond ((i-can-win? triples me)
(choose-winning-move triples me))
((opponent-can-win? triples me)
(block-opponent-win triples me))
))
Can the Computer Win on This Move?
The obvious next step is to write i-can-win?, a procedure that should return #t if the
computer can win on the current movethat is, if the computer already has two squares of
a triple whose third square is empty. The triples x6x and oo7 are examples.
So we need a function that takes a word and a letter as arguments and counts how many
times that letter appears in the word. The appearances primitive that we used in Chapter 2
(and that you re-implemented in Exercise 9.10) will do the job:
> (appearances 'o 'oo7)
2

> (appearances 'x 'oo7)
0
The computer "owns" a triple if the computer's letter appears twice and the opponent's letter
doesn't appear at all. (The second condition is necessary to exclude cases like xxo.)
(define (my-pair? triple me)
(and (= (appearances me triple) 2)
(= (appearances (opponent me) triple) 0)))
Notice that we need a function opponent that returns the opposite letter from ours.
(define (opponent letter)
(if (equal? letter 'x) 'o 'x))

> (opponent 'x)
O

> (opponent 'o)
X

> (my-pair? 'oo7 'o)
#T

> (my-pair? 'xo7 'o)
#F

> (my-pair? 'oox 'o)
#F
Finally, the computer can win if it owns any of the triples:
(define (i-can-win? triples me) ;; first version
(not (empty?
(keep (lambda (triple) (my-pair? triple me))
triples))))

> (i-can-win? '("1xo" "4x6" o89 "14o" xx8 o69 "1x9" oxo) 'x)
#T

> (i-can-win? '("1xo" "4x6" o89 "14o" xx8 o69 "1x9" oxo) 'o)
#F
By now you're accustomed to this trick with lambda. My-pair? takes a triple and the
computer's letter as arguments, but we want a function of one argument for use with keep.
If So, in Which Square?
Suppose i-can-win? returns #t. We then have to find the particular square that will win
the game for us. This will involve a repetition of some of the same work we've already
done:
(define (choose-winning-move triples me) ;; not really part of game
(keep number? (first (keep (lambda (triple) (my-pair? triple me))
triples))))
We again use keep to find the triples with two of the computer's letter, but this time we
extract the number from the first such winning triple.
We'd like to avoid this inefficiency. As it turns out, generations of Lisp programmers have
been in just this bind in the past, and so they've invented a kludge[1] to get around it.
Remember we told you that everything other than #f counts as true? We'll take advantage
of that by having a single procedure that returns the number of a winning square if one is
available, or #f otherwise. In Chapter 6 we called such a procedure a "semipredicate." The
kludgy part is that cond accepts a clause containing a single expression instead of the usual
two expressions; if the expression has any true value, then cond returns that value. So we
can say
(define (ttt-choose triples me) ;; second version
(cond ((i-can-win? triples me))
((opponent-can-win? triples me))
))
where each cond clause invokes a semipredicate. We then modify i-can-win? to have the
desired behavior:
(define (i-can-win? triples me)
(choose-win
(keep (lambda (triple) (my-pair? triple me))
triples)))

(define (choose-win winning-triples)
(if (empty? winning-triples)
#f
(keep number? (first winning-triples))))

> (i-can-win? '("1xo" "4x6" o89 "14o" xx8 o69 "1x9" oxo) 'x)
8

> (i-can-win? '("1xo" "4x6" o89 "14o" xx8 o69 "1x9" oxo) 'o)
#F
By this point, we're starting to see the structure of the overall program. There will be
several procedures, similar to i-can-win?, that will try to choose the next move. I-can-
win? checks to see if the computer can win on this turn, another procedure will check to see
if the computer should block the opponent's win next turn, and other procedures will check
for other possibilities. Each of these procedures will be what we've been calling
"semipredicates." That is to say, each will return the number of the square where the
computer should move next, or #f if it can't decide. All that's left is to figure out the rest of
the computer's strategy and write more procedures like i-can-win?.
Second Verse, Same as the First
Now it's time to deal with the second possible strategy case: The computer can't win on this
move, but the opponent can win unless we block a triple right now.
(What if the computer and the opponent both have immediate winning triples? In that case,
we've already noticed the computer's win, and by winning the game we avoid having to
think about blocking the opponent.)
Once again, we have to go through the complicated business of finding triples that have two
of the opponent's letter and none of the computer's letterbut it's already done!
(define (opponent-can-win? triples me)
(i-can-win? triples (opponent me)))

> (opponent-can-win? '("1xo" "4x6" o89 "14o" xx8 o69 "1x9" oxo) 'x)
#F

> (opponent-can-win? '("1xo" "4x6" o89 "14o" xx8 o69 "1x9" oxo) 'o)
8
Is that amazing or what?
Now the Strategy Gets Complicated
Since our goal here is to teach programming, rather than tic-tac-toe strategy, we're just
going to explain the strategy we use and not give the history of how we developed it.
The third step, after we check to see if either player can win on the next move, is to look for
a situation in which a move that we make now will give rise to two winning triples next
time. Here's an example:

x o


x


o

Neither x nor o can win on this move. But if the computer is playing x, moving in square 4
or square 7 will produce a situation with two winning triples. For example, here's what
happens if we move in square 7:

x o


x

x

o

From this position, x can win by moving either in square 3 or in square 4. It's o's turn, but o
can block only one of these two possibilities. By contrast, if (in the earlier position) x
moves in square 3 or square 6, that would create a single winning triple for next time, but o
could block it.
In other words, we want to find two triples in which one square is taken by the computer
and the other two are free, with one free square shared between the two triples. (In this
example, we might find the two triples x47 and 3x7; that would lead us to move in square
7, the one that these triples have in common.) We'll call a situation like this a "fork," and
we'll call the common square the "pivot." This isn't standard terminology; we just made up
these terms to make it easier to talk about the strategy.
In order to write the strategy procedure i-can-fork? we assume that we'll need a
procedure pivots that returns a sentence of all pivots of forks currently available to the
computer. In this board, 4 and 7 are the pivots, so the pivots procedure would return the
sentence (4 7). If we assume pivots, then writing i-can-fork? is straightforward:
(define (i-can-fork? triples me)
(first-if-any (pivots triples me)))

(define (first-if-any sent)
(if (empty? sent)
#f
(first sent)))
Finding the Pivots
Pivots should return a sentence containing the pivot numbers. Here's the plan. We'll start
with the triples:
(xo3 4x6 78o x47 ox8 36o xxo 3x7)
We keep the ones that have an x and two numbers:
(4x6 x47 3x7)
We mash these into one huge word:
4x6x473x7
We sort the digits from this word into nine "buckets," one for each digit:
("" "" 3 44 "" 6 77 "" "")
We see that there are no ones or twos, one three, two fours, and so on. Now we can easily
see that four and seven are the pivot squares.
Let's write the procedures to carry out that plan. Pivots has to find all the triples with one
computer-owned square and two free squares, and then it has to extract the square numbers
that appear in more than one triple.
(define (pivots triples me)
(repeated-numbers (keep (lambda (triple) (my-single? triple me))
triples)))

(define (my-single? triple me)
(and (= (appearances me triple) 1)
(= (appearances (opponent me) triple) 0)))

> (my-single? "4x6" 'x)
#T

> (my-single? 'xo3 'x)
#F

> (keep (lambda (triple) (my-single? triple 'x))
(find-triples 'xo__x___o))
("4X6" X47 "3X7")
My-single? is just like my-pair? except that it looks for one appearance of the letter
instead of two.
Repeated-numbers takes a sentence of triples as its argument and has to return a sentence
of all the numbers that appear in more than one triple.
(define (repeated-numbers sent)
(every first
(keep (lambda (wd) (>= (count wd) 2))
(sort-digits (accumulate word sent)))))
We're going to read this procedure inside-out, starting with the accumulate and working
outward.
Why is it okay to accumulate word the sentence? Suppose that a number appears in two
triples. All we need to know is that number, not the particular triples through which we
found it. Therefore, instead of writing a program to look through several triples separately,
we can just as well combine the triples into one long word, keep only the digits of that
word, and simply look for the ones that appear more than once.
> (accumulate word '("4x6" x47 "3x7"))
"4X6X473X7"
We now have one long word, and we're looking for repeated digits. Since this is a hard
problem, let's start with the subproblem of finding all the copies of a particular digit.
(define (extract-digit desired-digit wd)
(keep (lambda (wd-digit) (equal? wd-digit desired-digit)) wd))

> (extract-digit 7 "4x6x473x7")
77

> (extract-digit 2 "4x6x473x7")
""
Now we want a sentence where the first word is all the 1s, the second word is all the 2s, etc.
We could do it like this:
(se (extract-digit 1 "4x6x473x7")
(extract-digit 2 "4x6x473x7")
(extract-digit 3 "4x6x473x7")
)
but that wouldn't be taking advantage of the power of computers to do that sort of
repetitious work for us. Instead, we'll use every:
(define (sort-digits number-word)
(every (lambda (digit) (extract-digit digit number-word))
'(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)))
Sort-digits takes a word full of numbers and returns a sentence whose first word is all
the ones, second word is all the twos, etc.[2]
> (sort-digits 123456789147258369159357)
(111 22 333 44 5555 66 777 88 999)

> (sort-digits "4x6x473x7")
("" "" 3 44 "" 6 77 "" "")
Let's look at repeated-numbers again:
(define (repeated-numbers sent)
(every first
(keep (lambda (wd) (>= (count wd) 2))
(sort-digits (accumulate word sent)))))

> (repeated-numbers '("4x6" x47 "3x7"))
(4 7)

> (keep (lambda (wd) (>= (count wd) 2))
'("" "" 3 44 "" 6 77 "" ""))
(44 77)

> (every first '(44 77))
(4 7)
This concludes the explanation of pivots. Remember that i-can-fork? chooses the first
pivot, if any, as the computer's move.
Taking the Offensive
Here's the final version of ttt-choose with all the clauses shown:
(define (ttt-choose triples me)
(cond ((i-can-win? triples me))
((opponent-can-win? triples me))
((i-can-fork? triples me))
((i-can-advance? triples me))
(else (best-free-square triples))))
You already know about the first three possibilities.
Just as the second possibility was the "mirror image" of the first (blocking an opponent's
move of the same sort the computer just attempted), it would make sense for the fourth
possibility to be blocking the creation of a fork by the opponent. That would be easy to do:
(define (opponent-can-fork? triples me) ;; not really part of game
(i-can-fork? triples (opponent me)))
Unfortunately, although the programming works, the strategy doesn't. Maybe the opponent
has two potential forks; we can block only one of them. (Why isn't that a concern when
blocking the opponent's wins? It is a concern, but if we've allowed the situation to reach the
point where there are two ways the opponent can win on the next move, it's too late to do
anything about it.)
Instead, our strategy is to go on the offensive. If we can get two in a row on this move, then
our opponent will be forced to block on the next move, instead of making a fork. However,
we want to make sure that we don't accidentally force the opponent into making a fork.
Let's look at this board position again, but from o's point of view:

x o


x


o

X's pivots are 4 and 7, as we discussed earlier; o couldn't take both those squares. Instead,
look at the triples 369 and 789, both of which are singles that belong to o. So o should
move in one of the squares 3, 6, 7, or 8, forcing x to block instead of setting up the fork.
But o shouldn't move in square 8, like this:

x o


x


o o

because that would force x to block in square 7, setting up a fork!

x o


x

x o o

The structure of the algorithm is much like that of the other strategy possibilities. We use
keep to find the appropriate triples, take the first such triple if any, and then decide which
of the two empty squares in that triple to move into.
(define (i-can-advance? triples me)
(best-move (keep (lambda (triple) (my-single? triple me)) triples)
triples
me))

(define (best-move my-triples all-triples me)
(if (empty? my-triples)
#f
(best-square (first my-triples) all-triples me)))
Best-move does the same job as first-if-any, which we saw earlier, except that it also
invokes best-square on the first triple if there is one.
Since we've already chosen the relevant triples before we get to best-move, you may be
wondering why it needs all the triples as an additional argument. The answer is that best-
square is going to look at the board position from the opponent's point of view to look for
forks.
(define (best-square my-triple triples me)
(best-square-helper (pivots triples (opponent me))
(keep number? my-triple)))

(define (best-square-helper opponent-pivots pair)
(if (member? (first pair) opponent-pivots)
(first pair)
(last pair)))
We keep the two numbers of the triple that we've already selected. We also select the
opponent's possible pivots from among all the triples. If one of our two possible moves is a
potential pivot for the opponent, that's the one we should move into, to block the fork.
Otherwise, we arbitrarily pick the second (last) free square.
> (best-square "78o" (find-triples 'xo__x___o) 'o)
7

> (best-square "36o" (find-triples 'xo__x___o) 'o)
6

> (best-move '("78o" "36o") (find-triples 'xo__x___o) 'o)
7

> (i-can-advance? (find-triples 'xo__x___o) 'o)
7
What if both of the candidate squares are pivots for the opponent? In that case, we've
picked a bad triple; moving in either square will make us lose. As it turns out, this can
occur only in a situation like the following:

x


o


x

If we chose the triple 3o7, then either move will force the opponent to set up a fork, so that
we lose two moves later. Luckily, though, we can instead choose a triple like 2o8. We can
move in either of those squares and the game will end up a tie.
In principle, we should analyze a candidate triple to see if both free squares create forks for
the opponent. But since we happen to know that this situation arises only on the diagonals,
we can be lazier. We just list the diagonals last in the procedure find-triples. Since we
take the first available triple, this ensures that we won't take a diagonal if there are any
other choices.[3]
Leftovers
If all else fails, we just pick a square. However, some squares are better than others. The
center square is part of four triples, the corner squares are each part of three, and the edge
squares each a mere two.
So we pick the center if it's free, then a corner, then an edge.
(define (best-free-square triples)
(first-choice (accumulate word triples)
'(5 1 3 7 9 2 4 6 8)))

(define (first-choice possibilities preferences)
(first (keep (lambda (square) (member? square possibilities))
preferences)))

> (first-choice 123456789147258369159357 '(5 1 3 7 9 2 4 6 8))
5

> (first-choice "1xo4x6o8914oxx8o691x9oxo" '(5 1 3 7 9 2 4 6 8))
1

> (best-free-square (find-triples '_________))
5

> (best-free-square (find-triples '____x____))
1
Complete Program Listing
;;; ttt.scm
;;; Tic-Tac-Toe program

(define (ttt position me)
(ttt-choose (find-triples position) me))

(define (find-triples position)
(every (lambda (comb) (substitute-triple comb position))
'(123 456 789 147 258 369 159 357)))

(define (substitute-triple combination position)
(accumulate word
(every (lambda (square)
(substitute-letter square position))
combination) ))

(define (substitute-letter square position)
(if (equal? '_ (item square position))
square
(item square position) ))

(define (ttt-choose triples me)
(cond ((i-can-win? triples me))
((opponent-can-win? triples me))
((i-can-fork? triples me))
((i-can-advance? triples me))
(else (best-free-square triples)) ))

(define (i-can-win? triples me)
(choose-win
(keep (lambda (triple) (my-pair? triple me))
triples)))

(define (my-pair? triple me)
(and (= (appearances me triple) 2)
(= (appearances (opponent me) triple) 0)))

(define (opponent letter)
(if (equal? letter 'x) 'o 'x))

(define (choose-win winning-triples)
(if (empty? winning-triples)
#f
(keep number? (first winning-triples)) ))

(define (opponent-can-win? triples me)
(i-can-win? triples (opponent me)) )

(define (i-can-fork? triples me)
(first-if-any (pivots triples me)) )

(define (first-if-any sent)
(if (empty? sent)
#f
(first sent) ))

(define (pivots triples me)
(repeated-numbers (keep (lambda (triple) (my-single? triple me))
triples)))

(define (my-single? triple me)
(and (= (appearances me triple) 1)
(= (appearances (opponent me) triple) 0)))

(define (repeated-numbers sent)
(every first
(keep (lambda (wd) (>= (count wd) 2))
(sort-digits (accumulate word sent)) )))

(define (sort-digits number-word)
(every (lambda (digit) (extract-digit digit number-word))
'(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9) ))

(define (extract-digit desired-digit wd)
(keep (lambda (wd-digit) (equal? wd-digit desired-digit)) wd))

(define (i-can-advance? triples me)
(best-move (keep (lambda (triple) (my-single? triple me)) triples)
triples
me))

(define (best-move my-triples all-triples me)
(if (empty? my-triples)
#f
(best-square (first my-triples) all-triples me) ))

(define (best-square my-triple triples me)
(best-square-helper (pivots triples (opponent me))
(keep number? my-triple)))

(define (best-square-helper opponent-pivots pair)
(if (member? (first pair) opponent-pivots)
(first pair)
(last pair)))

(define (best-free-square triples)
(first-choice (accumulate word triples)
'(5 1 3 7 9 2 4 6 8)))

(define (first-choice possibilities preferences)
(first (keep (lambda (square) (member? square possibilities))
preferences)))
Exercises
10.1 The ttt procedure assumes that nobody has won the game yet. What happens if you
invoke ttt with a board position in which some player has already won? Try to figure it
out by looking through the program before you run it.
A complete tic-tac-toe program would need to stop when one of the two players wins.
Write a predicate already-won? that takes a board position and a letter (x or o) as its
arguments and returns #t if that player has already won.
10.2 The program also doesn't notice when the game has ended in a tie, that is, when all
nine squares are already filled. What happens now if you ask it to move in this situation?
Write a procedure tie-game? that returns #t in this case.
10.3 A real human playing tic-tac-toe would look at a board like this:

o x o
o x x
x o


and notice that it's a tie, rather than moving in square 9. Modify tie-game? from Exercise
10.2 to notice this situation and return #t.
(Can you improve the program's ability to recognize ties even further? What about boards
with two free squares?)
10.4 Here are some possible changes to the rules of tic-tac-toe:


What if you could win a game by having three squares forming an L shape in a corner,
such as squares 1, 2, and 4?
What if the diagonals didn't win?
What if you could win by having four squares in a corner, such as 1, 2, 4, and 5?
Answer the following questions for each of these modifications separately: What would
happen if we tried to implement the change merely by changing the quoted sentence of
potential winning combinations in find-triples? Would the program successfully follow
the rules as modified?
10.5 Modify ttt to play chess.

[1] A kludge is a programming trick that doesn't follow the rules but works anyway
somehow. It doesn't rhyme with "sludge"; it's more like "clue" followed by "j" as in "Jim."
[2] Brian thinks this is a kludge, but Matt thinks it's brilliant and elegant.
[3] Matt thinks this is a kludge, but Brian thinks it's brilliant and elegant.
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Brian Harvey, [email protected]