Introduction and Explanation

Half my childhood was spent playing constraint-based games — Sudoku, Wordle, Crosswords, Tetris, Chess, etc. When I was torn between these options for my visual’s theme, I chose the game I still play the most: Tetris. I like math, and Tetris is a mathematically beautiful game.

The word “tetris” comes from “tetrominoes,” where each shape is made of exactly four squares. Why not five? A game of pentominoes does exist, but besides being a horrendous name, Pentis is also exhausting to play. Combinations of more than four blocks create far too many shapes. Tetris has seven, which aligns with what cognitive psychologists identify as the limit of human working memory (Miller, 1956). As my high school art teacher once said, “the best things are born from constraint”.

In Tetris, three of the seven shapes are symmetrical, inspiring relief when you get them. The other four stimulate frustration. That balance between relief and frustration is what makes the game addictive. Highs and lows — both needed to make the game fun. There is a metaphor there for those who care for them.

The board is only 10 squares wide, so each piece covers 40% of a row at most. By just trying to pack shapes into space, you are doing advanced combinatorial math without knowing it. It is computationally monstrous, yet comes naturally to our brains. In 2002, MIT researchers proved that the objectives in Tetris — 1. maximising rows cleared, 2. minimising holes created, 3. keeping the stack as low as possible — cannot all be achieved optimally simultaneously (Demaine et al., 2002). Meaning that Tetris has no perfect player — human or machine — because the problem of playing it optimally is provably unsolvable. The best you can do is worry about the next piece and keep going.

If my infographic tells you anything about me, it is that I am a perfectionist, incredibly ambitious and horribly rigid in my plans — a most unfortunate combination. This is what I have learnt in my two years of adulthood: When you have decided to play a challenging game, problems will stack up and rows will not always clear. The best thing to do then is worry about the next piece and keep going.