What are the Tetris pieces called?

There are exactly seven standard Tetris pieces, and every one is named for the capital letter it most resembles. Learn those seven names and the whole game reads more clearly.

Below you will find the short version first, then a fuller walkthrough with clear Tetris examples, a few closely related questions, and a link to try it yourself. Everything here is free to play right in your browser.

The short answer: The seven Tetris pieces are named after the letters of the alphabet they look like: I, O, T, S, Z, J and L. The I is the long bar, the O is the square, and the rest are bends and elbows. Modern guideline Tetris gives each piece a fixed color so you can recognize it instantly.

The seven shapes

The lineup is the I piece (a straight bar of four), the O piece (a two-by-two square), the T piece (a stubby T), the S and Z pieces (mirror-image zigzags), and the J and L pieces (mirror-image hooks). Every full game draws from just these seven, cycled by the piece randomizer. You can look each one up in the Tetris glossary.

Why the letter names

The letter names caught on because they are quick to say and easy to picture. Call out I, and everyone knows you mean the bar you save for a four-line clear. The naming is so intuitive that it crossed languages with the game itself, staying constant from arcade cabinets to modern browsers.

The colors you see

The official guideline assigns each piece a signature color: cyan I, yellow O, purple T, green S, red Z, blue J and orange L. Those colors are not decoration - They let your eye grab the right piece under real time pressure, which matters more the faster the game gets.

Meet the pieces in Marathon

People also ask

What is a tetromino?

A tetromino is a geometric shape made of four squares joined edge to edge. Counting rotations as the same shape, there are five free tetrominoes, but Tetris treats mirror images as different, giving the seven pieces you play with. The word comes from tetra, the Greek for four.

What is SRS rotation in Tetris?

SRS stands for the Super Rotation System, the official guideline standard for how pieces rotate. It fixes each piece's rotation states and, crucially, adds wall kicks, which nudge a piece sideways or up when a plain rotation would be blocked. SRS is what makes moves like the T-spin possible and consistent across modern Tetris games.

What is a T-spin in Tetris?

A T-spin is when you rotate a T piece into a notch that it could never have reached by moving sideways. Modern Tetris detects it with the three-corner rule: if three of the four corners around the T are blocked after the spin, it counts. T-spins clear lines while scoring far more than an ordinary clear of the same size.