Next year, Tetris turns 40 and I have been pre-emptively celebrating by giving myself wrist cramp as I marathon the game on my phone.
While we all know by now that Tetris has quite a bit of Lore, I mean, even Apple Studios have produced a film about it starring Taron Egerton.
That being said, while I spend all of my hours in the evening flipping and swiping Tetris blocks around, I’d never considered that they actually have names and, uh, I would never have guessed them.
The names of Tetris blocks were an important tool in the early days of the game
In the early days of the game, the bricks didn’t have colours as the game was in black and white. This meant that identifying the blocks was easier done by using names for the shapes.
According to The Gamer: “One of the most popular ways to name the blocks is to call them as the letter of the alphabet that they resemble: I, O, L, J, S, Z, and T.”
Which, honestly, makes perfect sense.
However, some pranksters have given them other names in the past in a move that actually was believed by the producers at the trivia show Jeapordy!
It all started when X (formerly Twitter) user vechitto shared a post, saying: “I found the original instruction booklet for Tetris and… did anyone know that these pieces had names??”
The edited instructions said: “There are seven total Tetris blocks, and knowing which is which at a glance is essential to mastering the game.”
In this cheeky post, our L shaped friends are named Orange and Blue Ricky, the Z’s are named after Cleveland and Rhode Island, the long line is called Hero, the T is Teewee and the cube? Smashboy.
Now, I will admit that when my blocks are getting too high and I desperately need to score a Tetris, yes, I would call the long line a hero. So, fair play. That one kind of works.
Orange and Blue Ricky, though?! Chaos.
