Soviet doctors put him in a full leg cast, requiring two to three months of in-home convalescence. To help him cope with boredom, a friend brought him books of math puzzles.It was the moment that would change his life, as detailed by Dan Ackerman’s new book The Tetris Effect.Pajitnov became addicted to the puzzles and eventually sought out other brain teasers. He developed a special fondness for pentomino puzzles — geometric jigsaw challenges that required players to join pieces made up of five squares into a set area.At 17, he became “spellbound” upon seeing his first computer. After graduating from the prestigious Moscow Institute of Aviation, Pajitnov took a research job in the computing department of the Russian Academy of Sciences.Eventually, he was supplied an Electronica 60, a computer that was a decade out of date and “incapable of displaying anything beyond the letters, numbers and symbols of his computer keyboard”.
