We, The Infected

Then they ate, and when his dad was done with the dishes they played tic-tac-toe.
Oskar liked sitting like that with his dad; the graph paper on the thin table, their heads leaning over the page, close to each other. The fire crackled in the fireplace.
Oskar was crosses and his dad circles, as usual. His dad never let Oskar win purposely and so until a few years ago his dad had always won easily, even if Oskar got lucky now and again. But now it was more even. Maybe it had to do with him practicing so much with the Rubik's Cube.
The matches could go on over half the page, which was to Oskar's advantage. He was good at keeping in mind places with holes that could be filled if Dad did this or that, mask an offensive as a defense.
Tonight it was Oskar who won.
Three matches in a row had now been encircled and marked with an "O" in the middle. Only a little one, where Oskar had been thinking of something else, had a "P" on it. Oskar filled in a cross and got two open fours where his dad could only block one. His dad sighed and shook his head.
"Well, Oskar. Looks like I've met my match."
"Seems like it."
For the sake of the game, his dad blocked the one four and Oskar filled in the other. His dad closed one side of the four and Oskar put a fifth cross on the other side, drew a circle around the whole thing, and
wrote a neat "O." His dad scratched his beard and pulled out a new sheet of paper. Held his pen up.
"But this time I'm going to .. ."
"You can always dream. You start."

metoo wrote:The game played by Oskar and his dad is called luffarschack, "tramp's chess". It is played on checkered paper, normally the kind used for solving math problems in school, which has squares sized 5x5mm:



The player who first get five squares in a row marked, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, wins. One game potentially can go on until the paper is full.

Here is a Swedish Wikipedia article about the game. The English counterpart is about Gomoku, which has many resemblaces to luffarschack.

metoo wrote:I'm glad to help!

This is yet another case of translation and cross-culture problems. For most readers this would make little difference, but for infected, who dig deeply into the text, it does.

a_contemplative_life wrote:Well, as an American, and being of the mistaken belief that they are playing American tic-tac-toe, one comes away with the impression that Dad must not be very bright if he is honestly losing. And it's not easy to see in the film what, exactly, they are putting on the paper, so... now I know!