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WHAT IS TETRIS :
Tetris is a deceptively
simple, completely addictive electronic puzzle game. Small shapes called
Tetraminoes fall from the top of the Playfield to the bottom. Tetraminoes
are comprised of 4 blocks arranged into 7 different patterns. Players must
rotate the Tetraminoes as they fall and fit them together across the bottom
leaving no open spaces. When the player fills an entire line with blocks,
that line clears from the screen. If players are unable to fill lines completely,
the Tetraminoes will stack up on the screen until the last row is incompletely
filled. At this point, the game ends, and the player must start again.
WHAT IS A TETRAMINO?
Four blocks arranged
into a shape.
WHY ARE TETRAMINOES
MADE OF FOUR BLOCKS?
While working
as a programmer in the field of speech recognition and artificial intelligence,
Alexey Pajitov, the inventor of Tetris, often programmed games as simple
tasks to test new equipment. On one particular occasion, he chose the traditional
puzzle Pentomino as a test, which required placement of 12 different-shaped
pieces formed out of five squares to be arranged in order in a box. However,
he quickly realized having 12 shapes made from combining 5 blocks together
was too much for real time game play, so he reduced the program to seven
shapes of four blocks. Thus the name Tetris, taken from tetra, the Greek
word for "four".