Glossary
The terms used on Mino Dojo, grouped by topic: piece names, controls, line clears, perfect-clear stacking and setup names, a list to consult when unsure.
This page collects the terms used in Mino Dojo’s lessons and practice modes, grouped by topic. The same thing can go by different names depending on the person or the community. Here you will find the name this site uses and what it means.
Pieces and the board
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Piece (tetromino) | A block made of four connected cells. There are seven kinds: I, O, T, S, Z, J and L. |
| Board (field) | The area where pieces are stacked. It is ten cells wide. |
| Surface | The shape of the top of the stacked blocks. |
| Step | The difference in height between neighbouring columns. The basic rule is to keep it to one row at most. |
| Hole | An empty cell covered by a block above it. It cannot be filled until the blocks above are cleared. |
| Well | A deep gap one cell wide, left open on purpose so that an I piece can be dropped in for a Quad. |
| Overhang (roof) | A block that sticks out with empty space under it. Used to build T-spin shapes. |
| Flat stacking | A way of stacking that makes no holes and keeps the surface flat. |
For more, see “Flat stacking and managing steps”.
Controls
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Hard drop | Dropping the piece to the bottom instantly and locking it right there. |
| Soft drop | Making the piece fall faster only while the key is held. The piece does not lock when it lands. |
| Hold | Putting the current piece away and swapping in the next piece (or the piece put away earlier). Once per piece. |
| Ghost piece | A marker showing where the current piece would land if it dropped straight down. |
| DAS | The wait between holding down a sideways key and the start of repeated movement. |
| ARR | The interval per cell during repeated movement. |
| Lock delay | The time between a piece landing and locking. During it you can still move and rotate the piece. |
| Wall kick | The mechanism that lets a piece settle in a slightly shifted position when its rotated position would overlap a wall or other blocks. |
| Spin-in | Using rotation to put a piece into a gap it cannot reach just by dropping from above. |
For more, see “Basic controls: moving, rotating and dropping”, “How to use Hold” and “Wall-kick rotation basics”.
Piece order
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Next preview (queue) | The display of the pieces coming next. This site shows five pieces ahead. |
| 7-bag | A randomizer that puts one of each of the seven pieces into a bag and draws them in random order. Every seven pieces, each kind appears exactly once. |
| Bag (cycle) | One group of seven pieces in 7-bag. “The first bag” means the first seven pieces. |
| Look-ahead | Deciding where to place not only the current piece but also the pieces a few steps ahead. |
| Elimination | Working out which pieces are still to come from the ones that have already appeared in the current bag. |
For more, see “What is 7-bag? How piece order works” and “Look-ahead and elimination: reading the queue”.
Line clears
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Single / Double / Triple | Clearing 1, 2 or 3 lines at once with a single piece. |
| Quad | Clearing 4 lines at once with a vertical I piece. |
| T-spin | Putting a T piece into a gap by rotating it and locking it there. It scores highly when it clears lines. |
| TSD | T-spin double. Clearing 2 lines with a T-spin. |
| TST | T-spin triple. Clearing 3 lines with a T-spin. |
| T-spin mini | A T-spin that meets only part of the conditions. It scores little. |
| B2B | Back-to-back. Making Quads or T-spin line clears one after another with no ordinary line clear in between. The points are multiplied by 1.5. |
| Combo (Ren) | Clearing lines with every piece you place, several times in a row. |
| Perfect clear (PC) | A line clear that leaves no blocks at all on the board. |
For more, see “Line clears and scoring” and “T-spin basics: the T-spin double”.
Perfect-clear stacking
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Perfect-clear stacking | Stacking with the aim of a perfect clear. |
| 4-line PC | A perfect clear that fills the 40 cells of the bottom four rows with exactly ten pieces and clears them. |
| Opening perfect clear | A perfect clear made with the first ten pieces, from the empty board at the very start of the game. |
| Second PC | A second perfect clear, attempted straight after the opening perfect clear. |
| Leftover | The shape of the empty cells that still have to be filled to reach a perfect clear. |
| Success rate | Of all the ways the hidden pieces can come, the share that can be turned into a perfect clear with the best placements. |
| Drill | A combination of board and piece order set as a problem in Perfect Clear Mode. |
For more, see “Perfect Clear basics”, “How to read the PC success rate” and “Reordering pieces with hold”.
Names of setups
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Setup (opener) | A fixed pattern of stacking. Building the set shape lets you go for T-spins or perfect clears reliably. |
| Opening | The very start of the game. The board is empty and 7-bag makes the piece order easy to read, so setups are easy to use. |
| DT cannon | An opening setup that scores a T-spin double followed by a T-spin triple. |
| TKI stacking | One of the setups that build a T-spin double in the opening. |
| Centre 4-wide | A way of stacking that leaves a gap four cells wide in the middle of the board to go for combos. |
| Donation | Deliberately covering the top of the well to build a T-spin shape. Clearing with the T-spin opens the well again. |
For more, see “TKI stacking: a T-spin double from the first seven pieces”, “How to build the DT cannon”, “The T-spin triple (TST): shape and entry”, “Centre 4-wide: keeping a combo going in a four-column well” and “The standard opening perfect clear”.
If you come across a word you do not know while reading a lesson, come back to this page. Terms are added here whenever a new lesson is published.