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 Sorry for the uncreative title, I couldn't think of one. Once again, I failed to beat my Tetris high score of 543,997. However, the reason for this is that rather than attempting to beat my score, I tried something else. The ability to hold pieces is vitally important in Tetris. For anyone who doesn't know, this involves placing your current piece in a storage area to save for later and instead using the next piece. If there was already a piece being held, that piece will be swapped out instead. This is a great strategy for when you don't have anywhere to drop your current piece, as it ensures that the player always has at least two options for which move they want to make. So I asked myself, what if I removed this feature that is vitally important for the balance of the game? In order to achieve the highest possible score without holding any pieces (by the end of the game, the hold area should be empty), I first needed to come up with a new strategy. Usually, one column i...

 As you might be able to tell from the title of this post, I was unsuccessful this week in my goal of conquering my Tetris high score. Those who read my last blog post will likely recall that I obtained a new high score of 543,997, which is over 40,000 points higher than my previous high score. While I made several attempts to achieve an even higher score, my efforts were ultimately fruitless. I don't remember the highest score I achieved this week, but I think it was somewhere around the 470,000 mark. (I restarted my computer so tetris.com deleted all my high scores.) There are several reasons I can attribute to my failure to accomplish my goal this week. One is that I did not have very much time to play Tetris due to having a large workload in most of my classes. (This isn't entirely true, as I procrastinated for most of my work, but my point still stands.) Another major reason is that I simply experienced burnout. After around 5 unsuccessful attempts to beat my high score, I...

 Good golly, that was fast! Last weekend, many of my friends used the free time to get as much work done as possible on college applications, which were due November 1st. However, since I knew I would have more than enough time to finish my applications, decided to instead take a break from all the stress with a game of Tetris. Instead of focusing on getting a high score, I just relaxed, playing some chill music in the background. Without realizing it, I ended up surpassing the score of 400,000. (For reference, my goal is slightly over 500,000. Also, this was my first game of Tetris in several weeks.) This was surprising, as I expected my score to be a lot less. From this experience, I realized two strategies that would be helpful in my goal: background music, and ignoring the score counter. I put a sticky note over the score and tried again. This time, I played nearly perfectly, making hardly any mistakes until I reached the higher levels. (In case you don't know, the pieces fall ...