AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'click' while trying to loop through XPATH tags in an array

I'm trying to write a bot using Selenium Python to play an online game of tic-tac-toe. I've scraped the XPATHS of the squares and placed them in variables. The bot is simple. It's just supposed to click random squares. I'll enhance the bot later. Right now, I just want to click elements, and I'm getting stuck by this line of code:

squares[square].click()

I get an attribute error in the traceback. I understand strings can't invoke the click() method, and usually, I would have something like this:

pickSquare = WebDriverWait(load_browser, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable(By.XPATH, Tags.someSquare))
pickSquare.click()

But I've put all of my XPATH variables into an array that I need to iterate through, and I'm not sure how to use By and EC on an array as such. Below is the code I have so far.

class TestCase_PlayGame():
    
    URL = "http://localhost:3000"
    
    @pytest.fixture
    def load_browser(self, browser):
        browser.get(self.URL)
        yield browser
    
    def test_playGame(self, load_browser):

        squares = [Tags.square1,Tags.square2,Tags.square3,
                   Tags.square4,Tags.square5,Tags.square6,
                   Tags.square7,Tags.square8,Tags.square9]
        
        clickedSquares = []
        random_square = randint(0,8)
        time.sleep(10)

        for i in clickedSquares:
            if i == random_square:
                self.test_playGame()
            else:
                clickedSquares.append(random_square)
        squares[random_square].click()

Below is the traceback.

self = <TestCases.TestCase_PlayGame.TestCase_PlayGame object at 0x000001DA3F4139D0>
load_browser = <selenium.webdriver.firefox.webdriver.WebDriver (session="324ff7dc-195c-4bdf-9ceb-84bf978dfc66")>

    def test_playGame(self, load_browser):

        squares = [Tags.square1,Tags.square2,Tags.square3,
                   Tags.square4,Tags.square5,Tags.square6,
                   Tags.square7,Tags.square8,Tags.square9]

        clickedSquares = []
        random_square = randint(0,8)
        time.sleep(10)

        for i in clickedSquares:
            if i == random_square:
                self.test_playTTT()
            else:
                clickedSquares.append(random_square)
>       squares[random_square].click()
E       AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'click'

TestCases\TestCase_PlayGame.py:52: AttributeError