Tetris

About Tetris

Tetris was invented in June 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, a researcher at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Inspired by a wooden pentomino puzzle he played as a child, Pajitnov wrote the first playable version on an Electronika 60 terminal that had no graphics hardware — the pieces were drawn with keyboard brackets. Within two years the game had escaped the USSR, sparked a three-way licensing war between Nintendo, Atari, and the Soviet trading company ELORG, and sold more than 400 million copies across every platform that has ever existed. It is simultaneously the best-selling paid video game of all time and a case study in international copyright law.

The rules are austere. Seven shapes — each built from four connected squares, hence "tetrominoes" — drop from the top of a vertical 10×20 playfield. You slide and rotate each falling piece so that the rows at the bottom fill completely. A row of ten blocks with no gaps clears, everything above drops down, and points are added to your score. The faster you play, the faster new pieces spawn — and when the stack reaches the top, the game is over. The genius of the design is that every session feels different while the controls stay identical across 40 years of ports.

How to Play Tetris

Use the left and right arrow keys to move the falling piece sideways, the up arrow to rotate it clockwise, and the down arrow to soft-drop it a little faster. The space bar performs a hard drop that slams the current piece straight down for a bonus and immediately locks it in place. On mobile, use the D-pad overlay or swipe in the corresponding direction; a short tap on the playfield rotates. A tall "Hold" or "Next" pane (depending on the build) shows the upcoming piece so you can plan two moves ahead.

Scoring rewards line clears in a non-linear way. One line clear grants a small amount of points, two lines grant more than twice that, three lines (a "triple") scale again, and clearing four lines at once with a single I-piece — the literal Tetris — awards the biggest line-clear bonus in the game. Modern rules add T-spins, back-to-back combos, and perfect-clear multipliers, but the core cycle is always: spawn, move, rotate, drop, clear.

Strategy Guide: 7 Tips From Stackers

1. Keep the surface flat. A level skyline means every new piece has several viable slots.
2. Dig a one-column "well." Leave a single column open down the right side so you can wait for I-pieces and score real Tetrises.
3. Never skyscraper. A column three cells taller than its neighbours is almost always a trap.
4. Learn the seven pieces' rotations. The S and Z pieces only have two unique orientations; the T-piece has four distinct ones. Memorising this removes a whole class of panic spins.
5. Soft-drop, then slide. In modern rotation systems you can rotate a piece at the bottom to slide it under an overhang. This is how T-spins work.
6. Look at the preview. The next piece is visible for a reason — do not commit to a placement that blocks the upcoming shape.
7. Play until you lose, then reflect. Tetris improvement is mostly about recognising the positions that kill you, not about raw speed.

Common Mistakes

• Hard-dropping in a panic. Slam only when you are certain.
• Leaving a single-cell hole. One buried gap costs multiple line clears to recover.
• Ignoring the well. Abandoning your I-piece channel kills your Tetris scoring.
• Over-rotating S and Z. They have only two unique rotations; extra spins waste frames.