You might not read/use this but…
Star’s Polynomial Basics
Okay, here are the vocabulary that you need to know, they’re pretty simple:
Constant: Any number (5, -7, 1/2)
Variables: Any letter (a, b, c, …)
Exponents: The smaller numbers that you see
In here it’s the 3 ^. Also note that in polynomials, the exponents can only be 0 and up in whole numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, …)
The constant, variable, and exponents are all what make up a polynomial. It’s doesn’t have to be all 3, it can just be something like a constant and variable (5y)
One polynomial is also called a term. Here are what multiple terms in an equation are called.
One term = Monomial (5a)
Two terms = Binomial (5a + 6)
Three terms = Trinomial (5a + 6 + 2x)
Four Terms and up = Polynomial
You may or may not know how to add, subtract, etc polynomials by writing, but I’ll just skip it
Lastly I noticed the thing where you talked about the tic tac toe method but I have something simplistic to solve these things called the Box Method
Let’s say you have the problem (x+5)(x-5). You want to create the boxes based on the terms so since there are four terms (x, 5, x, -5) they’ll be four boxes. You want to draw it like this.
Then you want to multiply according to the boxes. I color coded this to make it easier on what to multiply
After that, cross multiply the terms like this
Then solve with what you got
Then that’s your answer. The dark pink canceled out and wasn’t apart of the equation since it equaled to 0. The hot pink side though is the answer. You can’t simplify it since we don’t know what x is so what’s inside the purple circle is what the answer to the equation is.
I hoped this helped and maybe help with your polynomial problem. Hopefully this was easy to understand. If you still don’t need it, oh well, I’m bored anyways ;-;