Tetris (Russian: Тетрис, pronounced [ˈtʲetrʲɪs])is a tile-matching puzzle video game originallydesigned and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in theSoviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984,while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (all of the game's pieces contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.It is also the first entertainment software to beexported from the USSR to the US and published bySpectrum Holobyte for Commodore 64 and IBM PC. TheTetris game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the fourelement special case of polyominoes. Polyominoes havebeen used in popular puzzles since at least 1907, andthe name was given by the mathematician Solomon W. Golombin 1953. However, even the enumeration of pentominoes isdated to antiquity.
