A strange little side quest
Before the next round of World of Alice: Make Words, here is a piece of the bigger picture. Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in 1984 after drawing inspiration from pentomino puzzles, then simplified the idea around shapes made from four squares. There is another connection worth keeping in the same mental pocket: Reader Rabbit's 1986 arrival was part of a major expansion of educational computer software before the CD-ROM boom of the 1990s. That is the kind of background detail that makes another attempt at World of Alice: Make Words feel a bit more connected to the history of play.
