The Tic-Tac-Toe occurrence is located west of the south end of Stump Lake.
Regionally, the area is situated within the folded, fault-bounded eastern belt of the Upper Triassic Nicola Group and underlain by volcanics and sediments that have undergone low-grade greenschist facies metamorphism. To the west, Paleocene and Late Triassic to Early Triassic granodioritic intrusive rocks are exposed. The area lies on the west limb of a regional north-trending syncline, the axis of which passes through Stump Lake.
Locally, the area is underlain by massive, pyritic volcanic breccia, amygdaloidal andesite flows, tuff, interbedded sandstone and shale and a highly sheared, serpentine-rich ultramafic with 1 per cent disseminated magnetite throughout. Narrow, post-mineral(?) diabase dikes intrude this sequence.
An east-trending alteration envelope, 1000 metres long and up to 200 metres wide, occurs along the northern edge of the main ultramafic mass. This highly carbonatized zone consists of rusty siderite-quartz-fuchsite rock cut by abundant quartz-carbonate stringers. Hematitic and kaolinitized sections are irregularly distributed. Network stringers contain disseminated tetrahedrite, chalcopyrite and pyrite and locally give the rock a crackle breccia appearance. Azurite occurs on fracture surfaces. Planar stringers are commonly barren, strike east-northeast and dip steeply. Banded veins up to 6 centimetres wide consist of alternating yellow carbonate and white chalcedonic quartz bands and contain fine disseminated pyrite, chalcopyrite and tetrahedrite(?).
In 1968, sampling of trenches yielded up to 0.5 gram per tonne gold, 3.4 grams per tonne silver, 0.05 per cent copper and 0.11 per cent nickel over 24 metres of trench no. 1; select samples are reported to have yielded up to 2 per cent copper and 205.2 grams per tonne silver (Property File - A.W. McGuire [1968-11-01]: Property Submission - A.W. McGuire).
In 1979, sampling of three mineralized zones yielded 0.25 per cent copper and 14.4 grams per tonne silver from a grab sample of the no. 1 zone; 0.16 per cent copper over 75 centimetres from the no. 2 zone trench and 0.42 per cent copper with 87.2 grams per tonne silver from a grab sample of the no. 3 zone (Assessment Report 7893).
In 1983, diamond drilling intersected intervals up to 3 metres in length assaying 0.13 per cent copper, 4.8 grams per tonne silver and 0.21 gram per tonne gold (Assessment Report 11434). Also at this time, select samples of copper-stained outcrop were reported to have yielded up to 547.2 grams per tonne silver (Property File - Seymour Resources Ltd. [1979-05-12]: GCNL News Clippings - TIC-TAC-TOE).
In the late 1960s, the area was staked as the S.F. claims. In 1971, the area immediately north was examined as the Boo claims by Maiko Resources Ltd. In 1973, a regional program of geochemical sampling was completed on the area. In 1979, Seymour Resources completed a program of soil sampling, geological mapping, ground geophysical surveys and three diamond drill holes, totalling 118.0 metres, on the area as the Tic, Tac and Toe claims. In 1982, a ground electromagnetic survey was completed. In 1983, a further program of soil sampling, geological mapping and diamond drilling was performed.
