Jeopardy! is one of the most popular television shows in the world, and for good reason. It has gained almost a cult following during its 35 years on the TV, but something very unique happened recently that caught everyone off guard.
The Gadget Preview realized that the show used a Fake Tetris name in one of the questions on the show. Of course, mistakes can happen during television and these mistakes do sometimes fall through the net.
Regardless, of the issue being incorrect, the player still got the question right. Many players of the popular game aren’t aware of the block names that come with Tetris, and they may be worth knowing just in case you need to know them if you should appear on a television show. They are interesting to know anyway because a lot of them are hugely amusing.
Photoshopped Version
A tweet from earlier this year from game developer Vecchitto showed that he had made a photoshopped version of a Tetris instruction booklet. In here, he named the fake titles on the different variants of blocks. These names include Blue Ricky, Orange Ricky, Cleveland Z, Rhode Island Z, Teewee, Smashboy, and Hero.
The tweet was hugely successful and went viral pretty quickly after it was sent. It established a solid 12,500 retweets in less than seven days.
Then, we fast forward to the October edition of Jeopardy! The question was asked surrounding video games and was worth $800 for the player in the category of ‘Video Game Pourri’. The question read: ‘The 7 rotatable blocks used in this video game have names like Orange Ricky, Hero and Smashboy.”
The power of social media had ensured that somehow the unlikely names had stuck and even global quiz shows were picking up on the new names and believing that they were actually real. It was an astonishing turn of events and something that Vecchitto may not have ever thought to be possible.
Response
However, there are always those that like to spoil the fun, and for this game that was Norman Caruso. The gaming historian quickly came out and posted on social media that the quiz show was wrong as there are no names for the blocks in Tetris. His post said” “I just checked my Tetris manual, no names. Sorry Jeopardy.”
He wasn’t the only expert gamer to chime in with their view, as Chris Chapman also addressed the question. He posted a short video addressing the question of Jeopardy! And offered his assistance to the researching team next time they were about to ask a video game-related question. The response to this debacle has been astounding, and there continues to be those posting on social media about it.
However, surely it is only a good thing that Tetris is being spoken about on national television, and we should just see the funny side of it?
