Tetris
Tetris is a puzzle computer game created by Alexey Pajitnov on June 6, 1984. It is probably one of the most famous and popular games in the entire world. It can be played on games consoles, mobile phones, and even graphing calculators.
Here are the rules of Tetris:
- There are seven pieces composed of four blocks. These pieces are called tetrominoes.
The tetrominoes have special names to make discussing them much easier. Starting from the light blue piece and going clockwise: J, Z, L, S, T, O, I
- Tetrominoes in a random sequence will be dropped into a board with a size of 10x20 blocks.
- The board is empty at start.
- The game will continue until a piece can no longer exit or enter a spawning area. The spawning area is typically located in the top and center of the board.
Theoretically the game could last forever, but this has been proven to be false. An article entitled How to Lose at Tetris proves that an alternating sequence of S and Z tetrominoes will inevitably cause the player to fail no matter the skill of the player. Although this will take perhaps trillions of years for a random number generator to produce 120 alternating S and Z tetorminoes, it will not last forever.
Here is the source code for Tetris from Qt.
Super Tetris
Super Tetris has the same rules of Tetris except the tetrominoes have five or more blocks in each piece. The pieces do not have holes built into them.
Questions about Tetris
Q: How do I ask questions about Tetris or need help coding?
A: Just edit the page and post a question like this one. Please try to keep questions and answers in this form to make the page easier to read. Also be sure to make sure to check to see if your question has already been answered in the Questions or above sections.
An Interesting Paper
A very interesting paper by Demaine, Hohenberger, and Liben-Nowell "Tetris is Hard, Even to Approximate".
