How Garbage Works

Your clears become rows in your opponent's well, rising from the floor with a single gap in them.

In versus modes, clearing lines sends garbage to the other player. Garbage rows rise from the floor of their well, pushing their entire stack upward.

What a garbage row looks like

Nine cells filled, one cell open. The gap is what makes garbage survivable: it gives the receiving player a column to clear through.

Consecutive rows in the same batch share the same gap column, so a four-row hit arrives as one clean channel rather than four scattered gaps. That is deliberate. Scattered gaps would be nearly unrecoverable, and the game is meant to be hard rather than arbitrary.

When it lands

Garbage does not arrive the instant it is sent. It queues in a meter beside your well, and it only rises when you place a piece that clears nothing.

That delay is the most important rule in versus play. It gives you a window to respond, and it means you control the timing of when you take the hit.

What it does to your stack

Everything moves up by the number of rows that landed. A stack that was eight rows high becomes twelve. Rows you had almost completed are still almost complete, just higher.

If the push would force blocks out through the top of the field, you are eliminated, even if your own stacking was fine.

The channel

Because a batch shares one gap column, the fastest response to garbage is usually to clear straight down that channel. Drop a vertical I into it, or build across it and clear the rows the ordinary way.

Different batches have different gap columns, so several batches stacked on top of each other leave a staircase of gaps rather than one channel. That is considerably worse, and it is why taking many small hits is more dangerous than one large one.

Reading the meter

TETERI shows queued garbage as a coloured bar beside your well: yellow for a little, orange for more, red when it is serious, with the number above it.

When that bar is filling, do not place a quiet piece. Find a clear.

Common questions

When does garbage actually appear in my well?

When you place a piece that does not clear any lines. Until then it waits in the meter beside your well, which is your window to respond.

Why do garbage rows have a hole in them?

So they can be cleared. All the rows in one batch share the same hole column, giving you a channel to clear through.