article
Open access
Tetris is NP-hard even with <i>O</i>(1) Rows or Columns
Research footprint
At a glance
- Citations
- 2
- References
- 0
- Comments
- 0
Paper overview
Öz
We prove that the classic falling-block video game Tetris (both survival and board clearing) remains NP-complete even when restricted to 8 columns, or to 4 rows, settling open problems posed over 15 years ago. Our reduction is from 3-Partition, similar to the previous reduction for unrestricted board sizes, but with a better packing of buckets. On the positive side, we prove that 2-column Tetris (and 1-row Tetris) is polynomial. We also prove that the generalization of Tetris to larger k-omino pieces is NP-complete even when the board starts empty, and even when restricted to 3 columns or 2 rows or constant-size pieces. Finally, we present an animated Tetris font.
Record transparency
Publication details
- DOI
- 10.2197/ipsjjip.28.942
- OpenAlex
- W3112586448
- Document type
- article
- Language
- EN
- Source
- Journal of Information Processing
- Last metadata update
Comments
Oturum Açın to join the discussion.