Q 01/05

Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of which Soviet institution?

A) Moscow State University

B) The Academy of Sciences

C) The Ministry of Radio Industry

D) The Kurchatov Institute

Answer · why

B) The Academy of Sciences

His day job was speech recognition and artificial intelligence research; the game was a spare-time project, one of more than twenty he wrote on the of...

Q 02/05

The very first version of Tetris was written for which Soviet computer, a clone of the PDP-11?

A) SM-4 minicomputer

B) Agat-7

C) Elektronika 60

D) Iskra 1030

Answer · why

C) Elektronika 60

The machine had no graphics, so the falling pieces were drawn out of spaces and square brackets.

Q 03/05

In which programming language did Pajitnov write the original game?

A) BASIC

B) Fortran

C) Pascal

D) Assembly

Answer · why

C) Pascal

The IBM PC port that spread across Moscow was done in Turbo Pascal by Pajitnov, Dmitry Pavlovsky and a teenage prodigy over about two months.

Q 04/05

The name Tetris combines the Greek 'tetra' with which sport, Pajitnov's favourite?

A) Table tennis

B) Chess

C) Gymnastics

D) Tennis

Answer · why

D) Tennis

'Tetra' means four, for the four blocks in every piece.

Q 05/05

Pajitnov scaled the game down from which twelve-shape puzzle he had bought in a shop?

A) Hexominoes

B) The Soma cube

C) Tangram

D) Pentominoes

Answer · why

D) Pentominoes

Twelve five-block shapes felt needlessly complicated, so he dropped to four-block pieces, of which there are only seven.