Tetris Trivia
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58 free Tetris trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Tetris trivia quiz covers the whole story of the world's best-selling video game: how Alexey Pajitnov built it in his spare time at a Moscow computing centre in the mid-1980s, how a floppy disk found its way to Hungary and London, and how Henk Rogers walked uninvited into a Soviet ministry to win the Game Boy rights from under Robert Maxwell's nose. There are questions on the music (why a Russian folk song became the theme, and what Bach is doing on the Game Boy), the maths (why a game must eventually end), the lawsuits, and the modern era of Tetris Effect, Tetris 99, the Classic Tetris World Championship and the 13-year-old who finally crashed the NES version. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has cleared a few lines, a third are medium, and the rest are for people who know their Elorg from their Elektronika. It works as a solo quiz, a retro-gaming pub round or a warm-up before a Tetris night. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of which Soviet institution?
The Academy of Sciences
The Academy of Sciences paid Pajitnov a researcher's salary, and Tetris earned him nothing more for about a decade, until his rights came back to him.
Q 02Which computer, with no graphics at all, ran the very first Tetris, its blocks drawn from text characters?
Elektronika 60
Elektronika 60 terminals showed only text, yet colleagues got hooked anyway, so the team soon ported the game to a machine with a sharper colour screen.
Q 03In which programming language did Pajitnov write the original Tetris?
Pascal
Pascal was the language, and once the game ran, Pajitnov pretended he was still debugging it when really he just couldn't stop playing.
Q 04Pajitnov blended a word for four with which sport, his favourite, to name Tetris?
Tennis
Tennis supplied the rest of the name, and the game began as a quick test program Pajitnov wrote to see what a new lab computer could do.
Q 05Pajitnov scaled Tetris down from which twelve-shape puzzle, a childhood favourite of his?
Pentominoes
Pentominoes have twelve five-square pieces, and rotating that many in real time seemed too complicated, so Pajitnov cut every piece to four squares.
Q 06Which Tetris move instantly drops and locks a piece?
Hard drop
Hard drop is missing from Nintendo's NES Tetris, so pros at the Classic Tetris World Championship can only speed a piece down with a soft drop.
Q 07Which computer did 16-year-old Vadim Gerasimov port Tetris to, giving the game colour?
IBM PC
IBM PC Tetris spread fast: Pajitnov said it went through Soviet PC owners 'like a wood fire', and Moscow went Tetris-crazy.
Q 08Software dealer Robert Stein first saw Tetris during a business visit to which country?
Hungary
Hungary's programmers did contract work for Western firms, which is how Stein, who licensed Hungarian software to UK companies, came across Tetris there.
Q 09Andromeda Software licensed Tetris to Mirrorsoft, a UK publisher owned by which media magnate?
Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell's son Kevin went to Moscow for the Game Boy rights too, but the Soviet negotiators gave them to Henk Rogers instead.
Q 10Which American publisher first released Tetris in the United States?
Spectrum HoloByte
Spectrum HoloByte's chief, Gilman Louie, dressed the Moscow-made game in Soviet imagery and folk music to make it stand out to American buyers.
Q 11The red US box art for Tetris's 1988 PC release featured which Moscow landmark?
Saint Basil's Cathedral
Saint Basil's Cathedral turned up again in Nintendo's NES Tetris, where the best A-Type ending has the cathedral itself blast off into space.
Q 12Henk Rogers first saw Tetris on public display at which 1988 trade show?
The Winter CES
The Winter CES in Las Vegas was a scouting trip where his job was to judge each game in minutes, yet he kept going back to the Tetris machine.
Q 13Henk Rogers published Tetris in Japan in 1988 through which company of his own?
Bullet-Proof Software
Q 21Game Boy Tetris's two-player mode needed two consoles and which accessory?
The Link Cable
The Link Cable mode is what Nintendo dropped when it rereleased Game Boy Tetris on the 3DS Virtual Console in 2011, leaving that version single-player only.
Q 22Oxford researchers found that playing Tetris soon after watching traumatic film footage reduced what?
Flashbacks
Flashbacks dropped, but not every game helps: in a follow-up study, a general-knowledge quiz game called Pub Quiz actually increased them.
Q 23Beating Game Boy Tetris's hardest B-Type setting launches which Soviet spacecraft?
The Buran shuttle
Bullet-Proof Software's Famicom version was already on sale in Japan when Rogers carried a cartridge to Moscow, and the Soviet rights holders had never heard of it.
Q 14Which Soviet software-export monopoly ended up negotiating the Tetris rights?
Elorg
Elorg got an uninvited visitor in Henk Rogers, who broke the rules by talking business on a tourist visa and still left Moscow with the Game Boy rights.
Q 15Chasing the Tetris rights, Henk Rogers put up whose property as collateral?
His in-laws'
His in-laws' property was on the line, not the family home that the 2023 film shows Rogers risking.
Q 16Mirrorsoft's owner tried to lobby which Soviet leader to overturn the Nintendo Tetris deal?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev seemed within reach, since Mirrorsoft's owner had Kremlin contacts and had published Communist leaders' life stories, yet the Soviet agency kept its deal with Rogers and Nintendo.
Q 17Which Atari Games subsidiary released an unlicensed NES Tetris, then had to pull it?
Tengen
Tengen's version was pulled within weeks when a judge sided with Nintendo, leaving Atari Games with piles of cartridges it could no longer sell.
Q 18Joseph Saelee won the 2018 Classic Tetris World Championship at 16 using which controller technique?
Hypertapping
Hypertapping beats simply holding the D-pad, which at NES Tetris's top speed usually can't push a piece all the way to the edge of the well.
Q 19In Tetris, the only piece that can clear four lines at once is named after which letter?
I
The I piece is worth waiting for: NES Tetris pays far more per line for a four-line clear than for singles, so top players stack high and hold out for it.
Q 20Henk Rogers told Nintendo a bundled Mario game would sell the Game Boy to whom, but Tetris to everyone?
Young boys
Young boys would buy it for Mario, Rogers argued, and Nintendo took his advice, packing Tetris in with the Game Boy in North America and Europe.
The Buran shuttle, the Soviet answer to NASA's Space Shuttle, blasts off in the game, but the real one flew into space only once, uncrewed, in 1988.
Q 24Game Boy Tetris's 'Music A', now known as the Tetris theme, is which 19th-century Russian folk song?
Korobeiniki
Korobeiniki is a flirtation: a peddler haggles with a young woman over his wares, a courtship dressed up as bargaining.
Q 25Game Boy Tetris's 'Music C' is a minuet from a French Suite by which composer?
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach never called these suites French: that label first appears in a text written twelve years after his death.
Q 26Which musical-theatre figure was half of Doctor Spin, whose 1992 Tetris single reached the UK top ten?
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber's single, alongside Ambassadors of Funk's 'Supermarioland', helped kick off a brief craze for novelty rave hits built on video game music.
Q 27The 'Tetris effect', seeing falling blocks after you stop playing, is traced to a 1994 article in which magazine?
Wired
Wired's writer, Jeffrey Goldsmith, described visiting a friend in Tokyo 'for a week' and still being there, playing Tetris, two months later.
Q 28With Rogers' help, Pajitnov and his family moved in 1991 to which US city?
Seattle
Seattle was meant as a career move, but after a few years Pajitnov decided to stay and later became a US citizen.
Q 29In Tetris Effect, activating the Zone lets players do what?
Freeze time
Freeze time, and pieces stop falling while you keep stacking, so completed lines pile up and can clear together, far more than four at once.
Q 30When his Tetris rights came back in the mid-1990s, Pajitnov went to work designing puzzles at which tech giant?
Microsoft
Microsoft later put his puzzle game Hexic HD on Xbox 360 hard drives, so the console shipped with a Pajitnov game built in.