Drop pieces onto the board. Fill a row, a column or a box and it clears. Keep going until nothing fits.
A piece is the shape you drag. A cell is one square of it, and the board is made of the same squares — so a piece covers as many cells of the board as it has. Pieces run from one cell up to five, and one has six: the golden F.
That is the golden F — one piece, six cells. It is worth a section of its own in how the points work.
9×9 cells, divided into 3×3 boxes — the same grid a sudoku uses. Fill a whole row, a whole column, or a whole box and it empties, which is the part sudoku does not do.
The box is the one people miss. Rows and columns are in every game like this one; boxes are what makes this one different, and a player who has not noticed them is leaving most of the board's clears on the table.
Three pieces at a time, along the bottom. Use all three and three more arrive. You choose the order, and that order is usually the difference between fitting all three and being stuck with the last one.
Drag a piece onto the board and the place it would land lights up as you move. Let go while it is lit and the piece lands there. Let go anywhere else and it flies back to the tray — nothing is lost, and nothing is spent.
A piece drawn in grey fits nowhere on the board, however you turn it — the game has already tried every rotation and flip for you. It needs room made first, or the bank. The exception is a locked piece: that one cannot be turned at all, so grey means the shape it arrived in has nowhere to go.
Three special slots, above the board. Drag a piece up from the tray to keep it for later instead of placing it now: the one piece that fits nowhere today, saved for a board that has room for it.
It counts as used, so banking a piece brings the next deal closer. Pieces lie down sideways up there to fit the slot; that does not change the piece.
Five of them, across the top of the game screen.
Tap a piece to rotate it 90° clockwise. Press and hold to flip it left-to-right.
Some pieces refuse, and shake instead of turning. Those are locked, and locking starts at 2000 points — see how the points work for what changes and when.
Those are the pieces you start with, grouped by how many cells they have. Each can arrive turned or mirrored, and the bigger ones turn up as your score climbs — and more shapes unlock the further you get. The golden F above is dealt by its own rare roll: about one piece in 60, so roughly one tray in twenty carries one.
If you cannot see anywhere to put a piece and it is not grey, then it does fit somewhere: try rotating it, or flipping it, and look again.
If you still cannot find it, the lightbulb above the board will show you one spot that works — once per game. One, and the same one for everybody, so every score on the leaderboard was earned under the same rules.
When nothing in your hand fits anywhere and the bank cannot save you, the game is over. Your score is final and, if you are competing, it goes to the leaderboard then.