Dear Everyone. Just joined to ask this question, really. Was watching Tetris videos on YouTube, the CTWC, and the commentator was talking about players getting a 'dirty Tetris'. Now I'm probably the world's worst tetris player because I'm disabled and don't have fast fingers but I love watching it. And I can't work out what a 'dirty Tetris' is. If it's one where the well isn't down one of the sides, does that mean anyone with a central well ONLY scores dirty Tetrises? And why are they dirty? Are they foul play/technical fouls? I don't understand. yours hopefully Chris.
I don't think there's an "official" definition of what it is, I think it's just something that made sense to say in the spur of the moment. My take on it, is when a player is trying to clean up some garbage, and they manage to sneak a tetris in there while downstacking. Something you'd usually do safely with singles and doubles.
Just to add to Sumez's answer: There's no foul play involved, it's just a creative term to describe a somewhat risky tetris. Maybe it was also meant to be a counterpoint to the terms "clean stack" and "clean tetris" that people have been using for a while.
That's a good point. My take-away is really just that someone got a tetris that you wouldn't have expected that they got away with. It happens a lot on NES, but in a head-to-head match it's very risky to rely on it.
According to @BenMullen, a dirty tetris is defined as "basically any Tetris where the line piece does not fall clear to the bottom". Honestly I also didn't know what it meant until I read his definition.
Yeah, that was my perception of it as well -- stacking tetrises in a layer above rather than going for more direct downstacking options (although it could be part of cleanup if it goes well). I'm not sure if a platformed clear should also be considered "dirty," but it would be considered as such by that definition. @BenMullen, thoughts?
Personally I'd consider a "dirty Tetris" to be any Tetris performed during a time where stacking for one would be considered risky (as in if the move goes wrong, you could very well top-out from the failed Tetris.) So in my eyes, no. That move would not be considered 'dirty' at all. As an example, I'd consider something such as this would be 'dirtier':
Elaborating on the "Dirty Tetris" thing, I feel like this would suffice to an extent: (Excuse the low quality and heavily bass-boosted audio. I was unable to clip the video as the file partially broke so I ended up recording over the recording so it's twice the weird.)
I always understand it as a tetris above lines with holes in it ("dirty line"), not how risky a move it was. Which basically is the same as cited by muf. I also remember people calling it a "comeback tetris", if it uncovers the holes.
