X's, crosses as kisses and as blessings

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:53 PM -0400 7/3/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  Interesting. And what about O's for hugs?
>>
>
>Once you have X for a kiss, O for a hug is an iconic partner. "Put your arms
>around me like a circle 'round the sun..."
>
>How old are X's and O's in tic-tac-toe?
>
and then there's X's and O's in football.  (A recent commercial, for
[Macanudo] cigars of course, plays off the tic-tac-toe/football
parallel, but doesn't touch on kisses and hugs.)

LH

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