Block Fit 10×10

With a mouse, press on a piece in the tray and drag it onto the board. A faint copy shows where it will land, and any rows or columns it would complete light up. Let go to drop it. If the spot doesn’t fit, the piece goes back to the tray.

On a phone or tablet, drag the piece with your finger; it floats a little above your fingertip so it never hides the board. If you prefer, tap a piece to pick it up, then tap the square where you want its centre.

On a keyboard, press 1, 2 or 3 to pick a piece, move it with the arrow keys (or W, A, S, D), and press Enter or Space to place it. Escape puts it back, U undoes your last move and H shows a hint.

1. The board is 10 squares by 10. Pieces can go anywhere they fit, but they can’t overlap or hang off the edge.
2. Pieces can’t be rotated or flipped.
3. Any row or column that is completely filled is cleared at once. A row and a column can clear together.
4. A new set of three pieces arrives only when all three have been placed.
5. Each placed square scores 1 point. Clearing lines scores 10 × lines², multiplied by your current streak (up to ×5).
6. The game ends when none of the pieces left in the tray can be placed.

Keep the middle open. Big pieces like the plus and the long bars need room. Build up along the edges and corners first, and leave the centre for the awkward shapes.

Think in rows and columns, not shapes. Before placing, look at which lines are close to full. A piece that finishes a line is almost always better than one that fits neatly but finishes nothing.

Don’t leave single holes. A lone empty square surrounded on four sides can only be filled by the smallest piece. Two or three of those and the board gets stuck fast.

Plan all three pieces. You place the set in any order. Before dropping the first, check that the other two will still have somewhere to go.

Protect your streak. A string of single-line clears beats one big clear followed by quiet turns, because the multiplier keeps climbing. If you can clear something every move, do.

Clear twice with one piece. A piece that completes a row and a column at the same time scores 40 before the streak, and frees up space in two directions.

Packing shapes into a grid is an old idea. Mathematician Solomon Golomb named and studied polyominoes in the 1950s, and puzzles about fitting them together into rectangles followed. Falling-block games of the 1980s made line clearing famous, but they rush you with gravity and a clock. In the mid-2010s, mobile designers stripped that away: no gravity, no rotation, just a square board, a few pieces at a time and lines that clear in both directions. Games such as 1010! made the format a hit on phones. Block Fit 10×10 is ArcadeWren’s own take, with its own piece set, scoring and streak system.

• Zen play. Ignore the score and try to keep the board as empty as possible for as long as you can.
• Streak hunting. Chase the ×5 multiplier and see how long you can hold it.
• No-hint runs. Play a full game without a single hint or undo.
• Bigger boards. Larger grids or different piece sets, which ArcadeWren may add later.