Block Puzzle
Drag a piece onto the board. Or press 1 2 3, move with the arrows, Enter to place.Drag a piece onto the board. It sits just above your finger so you can see where it goes.
About the game
Block Puzzle
- Line clears since
- 1984
- Modern form
- 2014, mobile
- Board here
- 8×8 or 9×9
- Levels here
- Easy to Hard, Daily
How to play
Three pieces wait under the board. Drag each one onto the board wherever it fits; pieces cannot be turned. When a row or a column is completely filled, it clears and frees its squares. Rows and columns that fill at the same time clear together.
When all three pieces are placed, three new ones arrive. The game ends when none of the pieces waiting under the board fits anywhere. A piece that fits nowhere right now is shown faded.
- Computer: drag a piece with the mouse. Or press 1, 2 or 3 to pick a piece, move it with the arrow keys and press Enter to place it. Esc puts it back.
- Phone and tablet: drag a piece onto the board. While you drag, it floats a little above your finger so you can see the squares under it. Lines that would clear light up in the piece’s colour before you let go.
- Tap to place: tap a piece to pick it up, then tap the board where its middle should go.
Scoring
- Placing: 1 point for every square of the piece.
- Clearing: 10 points for one line, 30 for two at once, 60 for three, 100 for four, and so on.
- Combo: clear on consecutive moves to build a combo that multiplies clearing points: ×1.5 for the second clear in a row, up to ×3. The streak survives up to two moves without a clear.
- Empty board: 300 extra points when a clear leaves the board completely empty.
Levels
- Easy: a 9×9 board and mostly small pieces. Every piece in a new set fits somewhere when it arrives.
- Normal: the standard 8×8 board, with the same guarantee.
- Hard: 8×8 with more large pieces; only one piece of each new set is sure to fit.
- Daily: the Normal game with the same pieces in the same order for every player that day.
Strategy
- Keep space for the big ones. The 3×3 square and the long five-square bar need open room. Before each move, check that a 3×3 area and a free row or column still exist.
- Fill edges and corners first. Pieces placed against the walls leave the middle open, and the middle is where large pieces fit.
- Plan all three. Look at the whole set before placing the first piece. The order matters: a piece that only fits now should go first.
- Clear more than one line at a time. Two lines at once are worth three times one line, and each clear in a row raises the combo.
- Avoid single holes. A lone empty square surrounded by blocks can only take the one-square piece, and it keeps its row and column from clearing.
- Use the preview. When you drag, the lines that would clear take the piece’s colour. If nothing lights up, ask whether a different spot sets up a double clear next move.
Origins
The pieces are polyominoes: shapes made of squares joined edge to edge. The American mathematician Solomon Golomb began writing about them in 1953 and named them; his 1965 book Polyominoes and Martin Gardner’s column in Scientific American the same year made them famous as puzzles.
In 1984 Alexey Pajitnov, a software engineer at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre in Moscow, turned a pentomino puzzle into a computer game. He cut the shapes down to the seven four-square pieces and added the rule every block game since has kept: a completed line disappears. That was Tetris.
The block puzzle on this page keeps the shapes and the line clears but removes the clock. Nothing falls; you choose where every piece goes and take as long as you like. That form became popular on phones in the 2010s. In the autumn of 2014 the small studio Gram Games, based in London and Istanbul, released 1010!, in which you place pieces by hand and clear rows and columns. It was a hit, and in 2018 Zynga bought the studio. Many games followed; the most popular today, Block Blast!, released in 2021, reported 70 million players a day in January 2026.
History
- 1953 Solomon Golomb begins writing about polyominoes and gives them their name.
- 1965 Golomb’s book Polyominoes; Martin Gardner introduces pentominoes to readers of Scientific American.
- 1984 Alexey Pajitnov writes Tetris in Moscow: four-square pieces and lines that clear.
- 2014 Gram Games releases 1010!: pieces placed by hand, rows and columns clear, no falling and no clock.
- 2018 Zynga buys Gram Games, the studio behind 1010!.
- 2021 Block Blast! by Hungry Studio; by January 2026 it reports 70 million daily players.
- 2026 This version on Zippi, with three levels, a daily game and world leaderboards.
Why it’s fun
- No clock. Every move can be thought through. The pressure comes from the board filling up, not from a timer.
- Big clears feel great. Setting up two or three lines and closing them with one piece is the best moment in the game, and the combo rewards doing it again.
- Short and long at once. A move takes a second, a game can last minutes or an hour, and you can stop at any point.
- Luck and skill are balanced. You can’t choose your pieces, but good players keep the board open enough that almost any set fits.
What it trains
Block Puzzle is practice in spatial reasoning: judging at a glance whether a shape fits, keeping several pieces in mind at once, and planning a few moves ahead to keep options open.
FAQ
Can I rotate the pieces?
No. As in most games of this kind, pieces keep the shape shown. Many shapes come in several orientations instead.
What is the Daily mode?
Everyone gets the same pieces in the same order on the same day. Play it as often as you like; your best score of the day goes on the daily leaderboard. A new daily game starts at midnight your time.
How does the world leaderboard work?
Easy, Normal and Hard each have a weekly board (starting again each Monday, UTC) and an all-time board. Our server replays every move to check the score and times the game from its first move. End game stops a game and puts its score on the board. No account is needed; add a name after your first result, or appear as Anonymous.
Is my game saved?
Yes. Each level and the Daily keep their current game on this device, so you can close the page and continue later.
Is there an undo?
No. Every move is final, which keeps the leaderboard fair.
This version
- Three levels: a 9×9 board with smaller pieces, the standard 8×8 board, and 8×8 with bigger pieces. Plus a Daily game with the same pieces for every player.
- Fair deals on Easy and Normal: every piece in a new set of three fits somewhere on the board when it arrives.
- A world leaderboard for each level. The server replays every move to check the score and times each game.
- Combos for clearing on consecutive moves, a bonus for emptying the board, and a preview of the lines a piece will clear before you drop it.
- Drag with a mouse or finger (the piece floats above your finger), or play from the keyboard. Each level keeps its own saved game.
Updates
- First version on Zippi: three levels, Daily game, combos, sound, and world leaderboards.
Page last reviewed .