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

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 02/05

Which computer, with no graphics at all, ran the very first Tetris, its blocks drawn from text characters?

A) Commodore 64

B) Elektronika 60

C) BBC Micro

D) Iskra 1030

Answer · why

B) 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 scree...

Q 03/05

In which programming language did Pajitnov write the original Tetris?

A) BASIC

B) Fortran

C) Pascal

D) Assembly

Answer · why

C) 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 04/05

Pajitnov blended a word for four with which sport, his favourite, to name Tetris?

A) Table tennis

B) Chess

C) Gymnastics

D) Tennis

Answer · why

D) 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 05/05

Pajitnov scaled Tetris down from which twelve-shape puzzle, a childhood favourite of his?

A) Hexominoes

B) The Soma cube

C) Tangram

D) Pentominoes

Answer · why

D) 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.