Block Puzzle
Play Block Puzzle Online for Free
Fill a row or a column on the board and it clears. Your game saves after every piece you place.
How to play
Choose a 10×10 or a 9×9 board and press Play. The board starts empty, with a tray of 3 pieces below it.
- Put a piece from the tray on empty squares where all of it fits. Use the 3 in any order.
- Every row and column the piece completes clears at once. Nothing falls into the gap.
- Once all 3 are placed, the tray fills with 3 new pieces.
Each square you place is 1 point. A piece that completes lines adds 10 times the number of lines squared: 10 for 1 line, 40 for 2, 90 for 3.
When no piece left in the tray fits anywhere, the game ends on “No room left”. There is no clock and no undo.
Controls
| Action | Touch | Mouse | Keyboard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pick a piece | Tap it in the tray | Click it in the tray | 1, 2 or 3, or Tab to it and press Enter |
| Drag a piece into place | Drag it from the tray onto the board | Drag it from the tray onto the board | Pick and aim instead |
| Aim the picked piece | Tap a square: an outline shows where it goes | Point at a square | Arrow keys or W, A, S, D |
| Place the picked piece | Tap the same square again | Click the square | Enter or Space |
| Pause or resume | Pause or Resume button | Pause or Resume button | Esc |
The square you tap or aim at is where the piece’s middle square lands; on a 2×2 square, that is its top-left one.
On a phone held sideways, the squares can get smaller than a fingertip. Then arrow buttons appear under the tray to move the picked piece, with a Place button to put it down.
Tips and strategy
Clear a line when you can, and tuck pieces in when you can’t
Putting each piece in the first spot that fits ends a game fast. Clear as many lines as you can, and when nothing clears, push the piece against the edges and filled squares: a computer that played this way lasted about ten times longer.
Keep a 3-by-3 space open
Only 1 new piece in 29 is the 3×3 square. Still, 7 games in 10 played by clearing lines first ended with it stuck in the tray. Keep room for it and both 5-long lines before anything else, and a game lasts about a third longer again.
Find room for all 3 pieces before placing one
Nearly every game ends with 1 or 2 pieces still in the tray. In games played by clearing lines first, more than 4 times in 10 that whole tray could have gone down in another order or in other spots.
Finish 2 lines with one piece
Say rows 9 and 10 are full except their last 2 squares. Two flat 2-square pieces clear a row each: 12 + 12 = 24 points. Stand them upright side by side, and the second one clears both rows for 2 + 42 = 44.
About Block Puzzle
Every piece here is a polyomino. The mathematician Solomon W. Golomb named them, building the word from domino. He wrote about them in The American Mathematical Monthly in 1954. The set has all 28 polyominoes of 1 to 4 squares, counting each turn and mirror image apart, plus 6 of 5 squares and the 3×3 square.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I turn or flip a piece?
- No. Each turned or mirrored version of a shape is a separate piece, so the L of 4 squares comes in 8 versions.
- Why did the game end with half the board empty?
- A big piece had nowhere to go. The 3×3 square needs a solid 3-by-3 block of empty squares, and a board can be half empty without one.
- Is the 9×9 board harder than 10×10?
- Yes. It has 81 squares but the same pieces, so it fills up faster: a computer keeping room for the big pieces lasted less than half as long there. Each size keeps its own best score.
