Past exam of the options I course of the University of Oxford / 2012 / E / E2 / c

The product topology on $X\times Y$ has as a basis all open rectanglesThus a subset $W\subseteq X\times Y$ is open precisely when, around every $(x,y)\in W$, there are open $U\ni x$ and $V\ni y$ with $U\times V\subseteq W$. These rectangles cover the product, and their pairwise intersections are rectangles because $(U\times V)\cap (U^{\prime }\times V^{\prime })=(U\cap U^{\prime })\times (V\cap V^{\prime })$. Hence they define a topology by part (b).

This is equivalently the coarsest topology making the two coordinate projection maps continuous: the preimages of factor-open sets are the open strips $U\times Y$ and $X\times V$, whose finite intersections are the basis rectangles.