STONES IN BLOCKS

In front of you is a stone tablet wrapped in curly stems, consisting of 64 squares. It's square: 8 cells horizontally and the same number vertically. At the bottom of it is a panel with blocks of stones. The stones are obviously precious: sapphires, emeralds, rubies and others are encased in small gold square mandrels. These stones are collected in blocks of two, three, four or more (up to nine) identical pieces. The configuration of the blocks resembles the shapes from the famousTetris game. There are also single stones. The size of each one is the same as the size of the cell on the board.

The player's task is to place these shaped blocks as compactly as possible on the board. Combining the installation locations, you need to achieve the most dense filling of the tablet so that it forms completely filled rows and rows of stones. Their colors don't matter. A completely filled row (column or row) disappears from the board, freeing up space for new blocks. The point of the game is to hold out as far as possible.

New blocks appear on the bottom panel after each turn, and their configuration is not known to the player in advance. There can be up to three blocks on this panel at a time, from which you can select the desired one before moving. If there is no free space required to place the remaining blocks on the board, it means that the player has lost.

To hold out longer, you should try to think about reserving enough space on the board to install a block of any configuration at each turn. Well, for example, you should always have a free 3x3 window to place a large square block, a vertical and horizontal strip of 5 stones in size for installing the corresponding blocks-strips. If you follow this recommendation, you can play for a very long time. However, in practice, it is often impossible to create such reserves of space on the board. In this case, get out of it, trying to remove rows and columns. Good luck!