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In the early 1980s, Pajitnov did research in artificial intelligence at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The Academy was one of the few privileged institutions that was allowed to communicate with different parts of the world beyond the iron curtain, and thus it frequently received new hardware. Hardware capabilities were tested with simple programmes, this is why Pajitnov started to write games. Even as a child he enjoyed puzzle games, especially pentominoes (geometric shape made up of five squares of equal size, and hence the name for domino consisting of two squares). In June 1984, Pajitnov got the idea that pentominoes would make a wonderful basis for a computer game. However, keeping the original rules of the game would have implied that 12 pentominoes would rotate in real time, which seemed to be far too complicated. So he decided to use tertominoes, which have seven shape variations.
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