A practical guide to this version of Free Tetris: understand the board, choose safer placements and work out your score. These rules describe this site, not every block puzzle or tournament.
01
First run: read the board
A piece stops when it reaches the floor or settled blocks. Full horizontal rows disappear; empty cells below a block remain holes. Start by making a low, even surface rather than chasing four-row clears immediately.
Use the Next preview before dropping. Ask where both the current piece and the next piece could fit. Hold can replace an awkward piece, but it can only be used once before the active piece locks. It is a planning tool, not an unlimited escape.
A hard drop commits immediately. First move and rotate, check the landing shadow, then drop. Use P to pause if you need a break. Paused time does not advance the level; the game resumes from the same board.
02
Safer stacking: holes, height and wells
A hole is an empty cell with a filled cell somewhere above it. It may require clearing the covering rows before you can use it. Before placing a piece, check whether its underside leaves a covered gap. A flat-looking top can still conceal holes.
Leaving a narrow well can prepare a multi-row clear, but a deep well is a trade-off. If the piece you need is not coming next, keep room elsewhere and reduce the stack. Do not turn a useful well into a reason to ignore every safer placement.
Practice one decision at a time: place the square in the two-cell gap, rotate the long piece for the side well, and compare the hole count before and after. The practice board has no timer, no account and no leaderboard submission.
03
Understand scoring and progression
At level 1, clearing one, two, three or four rows with a piece earns 100, 300, 500 or 800 line points. Multiply by the current level. Consecutive line-clearing pieces add 50 × combo index × level; the first clear has index 0.
Soft drops add one point per manually descended cell; hard drops add two per descended cell. These drop points are not multiplied by level. A piece that clears no rows resets the combo. This implementation does not award a separate T-spin or back-to-back bonus.
The level is 1 + completed 20-second intervals of active play + completed groups of 10 cleared rows. Speed changes gradually with time and again with each 10 rows. For the calculator, enter elapsed active time and rows cleared before the scoring placement.
Score explorer
Calculate one placement, not an entire game. Example: 40 active seconds and 10 previous rows give level 4. A four-row clear gives 3,200 line points; a 10-cell hard drop adds 20.