Solution to Tic Tac Toe
The hidden constraint on the answers to the given clues is that they need to contain three consecutive alphabetical letters. This is hinted at by the title, which is meant to suggest the phrase "three in a row". We may also notice the suspicious trigrams in some of the more constrained answers.
The answers to the clues are:
| Clue | Answer |
|---|---|
| Trickster vulnerable to their own name backwards | mXYZptlk |
| A fear of aliens | xeNOPhobia |
| Killing trees to clear land | DEForestation |
| Epic Greek king | agameMNOn |
| Levelheaded state | caLMNess |
| Expertise at assessing people or situations | aSTUteness |
| Term used to describe the original source's account | fiRSThand |
| The MIT court commonly known as "The Dot" | mCDErmott |
| Explorer of hell in arguably the most famous self-insert fanfiction | aliGHIeri |
| Rowboats, or other similarly sized vessels | dinGHIes |
| A condition of reduced sensibility or thinking | STUpor |
| Former name of a populous Eurasian city | constantiNOPle |
| Test given without warning | pOPQuiz |
| Edsger of an eponymous algorithm | dIJKstra |
| Rattail or pixie, e.g. | haiRSTyle |
Next, we notice that the first letters of the clues give the instruction TAKE LETTER AFTER. Extracting the letter after each consecutive triple gives the cluephrase PHONE THREE PLUS Y. The three consecutive letters on the 3 key of a phone are DEF, which combined with Y gives us the final answer of DEFY.