Month: September 2016

People seeing a LaPerm for the first time might think that the kitty stuck its paw in an electrical socket, or that its owner styled its fur into a bad ‘80s ‘do. But the real story behind the cat’s curly coat (and its kinky whiskers and eyebrows) is that the trait stems from a genetic mutation. Here are six things to know about the rare, ringlet-covered feline.

1. THE LAPERM IS DESCENDED FROM A HUMBLE BARN CAT NAMED SPEEDY.

With its flashy name and distinctively wavy coat, it’s hard to believe the LaPerm we know and love today is descended from a barn cat. In 1982, cat owners Linda and Richard Koehl, who lived in the The Dalles, Oregon, noticed that their gray tabby mouser, Speedy, had given birth to an unusual-looking kitten. Unlike its fuzzy siblings, the baby was bald, with tabby stripes on its skin. It also had a long body and big ears, yet it still weighed less than the rest of the litter.

Linda thought the quirky kitten would die, but it survived—and at 8 weeks old, the female tabby kitty grew a coat of downy curls. The Koehls dubbed her Curly, and she eventually bore five tomcats of her own. Just like their mother, the babies were bald and later grew wavy fur. (Later, geneticists confirmed that a dominant gene is responsible for the LaPerm’s curls, meaning that only one cat parent needs to be a carrier to pass it on to their young.)

The curly-haired felines mated with other neighborhood cats, which resulted in a wide range of unique, curly-coated cats. Their fur lengths differed, as did their patterns and colors. Linda Koehl did some research, and realized she might have a new breed on her hands, so in 1992 the cat owner took four of her cats—which she had by then named LaPerms, after their distinctive wavy fur—to a cat show in Portland, Oregon sponsored by the Cat Fanciers’ Association (CFA).

The LaPerm dazzled its feline-loving audience, so Koehl enlisted breeders and geneticists to help her officially establish a new breed. The enterprising cat owner launched her own cattery, wrote an official breed standard for the LaPerm, and waited for North America’s major cat organizations to officially recognize her remarkable kitties.

In 2003, The International Cat Association (TICA) accepted the LaPerm for championship status, and in 2008 the CFA finally followed suit. Eventually, groups in France, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa also embraced the LaPerm.

2. THE LAPERM’S COAT COMES IN DIFFERENT LENGTHS, SHADES, AND PATTERNS.

The LaPerm is a medium-sized cat with long legs, a wedge-shaped face, and large, flared ears. Its crowning glory is its fur: a mix of loose waves and tight curls, topped off with a soft, plumed tail.

The coat can come in any shade or pattern. The cat’s neck, ruff, underside, tail, and ear bases are covered in tight corkscrews, but the rest of its fur is gently crimped. Even its whiskers and eyebrows are wavy.

Some LaPerms are born with straight coats, and pass on the curly gene to their kittens. Litters can also include kittens with both straight and curly coats. Adding to the variety, breeders have created both shorthaired and longhaired versions of the feline. But don’t worry, lazy pet owners: Neither is a high-maintenance feline. Regardless of fur length, the cat’s undercoat doesn’t shed or mat easily, making grooming a breeze.

3. LAPERMS CAN BE BORN BALD, OR WITH STRAIGHT OR CURLY FUR.

LaPerm cats are occasionally born bald, but the kittens may also sometimes be covered in wavy or straight fur. Around 2 weeks of age, they’ll often start losing their coats, starting with a patch on top of their heads. They’ll remain bald for a while, until they eventually sprout a new coat that mimics the original texture.

If you have your heart set on owning a curly cat, wait for a LaPerm litter’s kittens to mature before purchasing one. That way, you’ll have a much better idea of what the cat will look like as an adult. And keep in mind that even when the kitty’s full grown, its coat will continue to change, partially or completely molting during life stages like pregnancy, puberty, and neutering or spaying.

4. THE LAPERM IS A “REX” CAT.

The LaPerm is a “rex” breed—a term people people use to describe animals with a genetic mutation that causes soft, curly fur. There are several recognized rex cats, including the Cornish Rex, the Devon Rex, the Selkirk Rex, and, yes, the LaPerm. Their coats are similar, but aside from that the kitties don’t have that much in common. Each has its own unique build, coloring, and personality, plus experts say they’re genetically different from one another. 

5. THE LAPERM ISN’T HYPOALLERGENIC.

Some people say the LaPerm is hypoallergenic, claiming that their coats don’t shed often and that their tight curls suppress dander. But breeders of the cat will set the record straight: No cat, including the LaPerm, is 100 percent hypoallergenic. There are many types of cat allergies, and not every person responds to them the same way. Plus, the LaPerm—like other cats—still produces the Fel d 1 protein, an allergenic protein found in cat saliva and skin oils.

6. IT’S A RARE BREED IN NORTH AMERICA.

If you’re a cat lover who’s never heard of the LaPerm, don’t worry—you haven’t been living under a rock: The cat is still relatively rare, and as of 2014, the CFA’s registration statistics showed that it was only the 40th most popular cat in America, out of 43 breeds [PDF].

The iPhone 7 was unveiled this week to a mixed reception. If you’re one of the Apple customers who isn’t thrilled about spending $159 on easy-to-lose AirPods, a new change to the AppleCare+ warranty plan may soften the blow. As CNN Money reports, the price of fixing a cracked phone screen has been lowered to $29.

AppleCare+ members previously had to shell out $99 to repair their shattered screens. Along with waterproofing the iPhone 7, making phone screen repair less expensive fits in with Apple’s new effort to market their products as better investments.

The new price only applies to customers with an AppleCare+ warranty, which costs $99 for iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and iPhone SE owners, and $129 for the 6S, 6S Plus, 7, and 7 Plus. The deal covers two repairs from accidental damage plus a service fee. Once those have been used up, additional repair costs jump back up to $99.

If you’re someone who breaks his or her screen without fail within a few months of getting a new phone, the membership may be well worth the investment. Without it, a new screen will set you back $149. For anyone already under warranty who has been putting off paying for the fix, the new policy is now officially in effect.

[h/t CNN Money]

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On May 20, 1993, Sam Malone—the fictional MLB pitcher-turned-proprietor of Cheers—announced it was “last call” for the final time at the Boston bar where everybody knows your name. But there’s plenty you probably don’t know about the classic sitcom, which spent 11 seasons on the air.

1. CHEERS ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT THROUGH SEASON ONE.

Like many of television’s greatest success stories (e.g. Seinfeld), Cheers was not an immediate hit. It premiered on September 30, 1982 to dismal ratings—77th place out of 100 shows that week, according to Nielsen. It was NBC’s entertainment president at the time, Brandon Tartikoff, who saved the show from cancellation during its first season.

2. THE BULL & FINCH PUB, ON WHICH CHEERS IS MODELED, IS NOW CALLED CHEERS

Talk about life imitating art. After it was decided that the series would be set in a bar instead of a hotel, co-creators Glen and Les Charles decided the locale should be moved to New England. “Boston was chosen partially because only five short-lived television shows claimed the city and the East Coast pubs were real neighborhood hangouts,” wrote Dennis A. Bjorklund in his book, Toasting Cheers.

As the show’s popularity rose, it didn’t take long for word to spread that the Beacon Hill tavern was the “real” Cheers (though only the exterior shots were filmed there), turning the neighborhood hangout into a tourist attraction. To satisfy the masses, a second location—this one was actually called “Cheers” and featured a replica of the bar viewers were used to—was opened in nearby Faneuil Hall in 2001. One year later, the Bull & Finch officially changed its name to Cheers.

3. SAM MALONE WAS A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER.

At least he was in the script’s earliest incarnations, which made sense considering that Fred Dryer—the former NFL defensive end who would go on to star in Hunter—was a top choice to play the role of Sam (opposite Julia Duffy as Diane; William Devane was also a strong contender). Ultimately, it was the chemistry between Ted Danson and Shelley Long that led to them getting the gigs. Once the casting was finalized, the creators swapped out football for baseball, based on Danson’s body type.

4. TED DANSON ATTENDED BARTENDING SCHOOL.

Danson spent two weeks at a bartending school in Burbank, California as part of his training to play Sam.

5. NORM AND CLIFF WEREN’T INTENDED TO BE REGULAR CHARACTERS.

Both George Wendt and John Ratzenberger auditioned for the same role in the pilot, a minor character named George who had a single line: “Beer!” The character’s name was changed to Norm Peterson when Wendt was cast. But Ratzenberger wasn’t about to give up so easily. “As I was leaving the office after the audition, I turned around and asked them, ‘Do you have a bar know-it-all?,’” the Bridgeport, Connecticut-born Ratzenberger recalled to Ability Magazine. “None of the creators was from New England. They were all Hollywood-centered. And I said, ‘Well, every local bar in New England has got a know-it-all—someone who pretends to have the knowledge of all mankind between his ears and is not shy about sharing it.’” Thus, Cliff Clavin was born.

6. NORM PETERSON IS BASED ON A REAL GUY.

In 2012, co-creator Les Charles told GQ that Norm was based on a real person. “I worked at a bar after college, and we had a guy who came in every night. He wasn’t named Norm, [but he] was always going to have just one beer, and then he’d say, ‘Maybe I’ll just have one more.’ We had to help him out of the bar every night. His wife would call, and he’d always say, ‘Tell her I’m not here.’”

7. NORM’S NEVER-SEEN WIFE VERA IS VOICED BY GEORGE WENDT’S REAL WIFE.

 Though she’s only credited in one episode, George Wendt’s wife, Bernadette Birkett, provided the voice for Norm’s wife, Vera. Birkett did make one appearance on the show—as a love interest of Cliff’s—in season three.

8. JOHN RATZENBERGER IMPROVISED MANY OF CLIFF’S FUN FACTS.

Many of the random (and untrue) facts that Cliff Clavin offers up were ad libbed by Ratzenberger. “After a couple of years on the show they realized they could trust me not to mess it up,” Ratzenberger told Deseret News in 1993. “So little by little they’ve let me just sort of run off. Because I know when to stop … It’s easy to improvise comedy. It really is. But the art is knowing when to shut up and let other people talk. That’s a hard thing to learn.”

9. SOME OF THE DIALOGUE CAME FROM REAL BAR CONVERSATIONS.

In order to nail the bar talk aspect of the series, the creators regularly visited bars in the Los Angeles area to eavesdrop on patrons’ conversations. In the series premiere, there’s an argument about the sweatiest movie ever made, which was lifted from one of these overheard conversations.

10. CHEERS WASN’T AFRAID TO TACKLE SOCIAL ISSUES.

Cheers’ writers never shied away from taboo topics such as alcoholism or homosexuality, through they always had a sense of humor about them. The season one episode “The Boys in the Bar,” in which one of Sam’s former teammates announces that he is gay, earned writers Ken Levine and David Isaacs a GLAAD Media Award.

11. PLANS FOR AN HIV SCARE FOR SAM HAD TO BE ABANDONED.

In 1988, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, which meant that several planned episodes of the series were never filmed. Among them was a season six cliffhanger in which Sam learns that a former girlfriend is HIV positive.

12. RHEA WASN’T THE ONLY PERLMAN ON THE SET.

Rhea Perlman wasn’t the only member of her family to grace the set of Cheers. Her younger sister, Heide, produced more than two dozen episodes between 1985 and 1986 and wrote several episodes throughout the show’s run. Perlman’s father, Phil, played one of the bar regulars (named Phil).

13. JAY THOMAS MURDERED EDDIE LEBEC.

When character actor Jay Thomas wasn’t portraying Carla’s Bruin-turned-ice-show-performer husband Eddie LeBec, he was the host of a popular morning radio show in Los Angeles. Which is exactly what led to his character being killed off rather prematurely by way of Zamboni. “A few episodes of recurring bliss and then one day on Jay’s radio show, a caller asked him what it was like to be on Cheers,” recounts writer Ken Levine. “He said something to the effect of, ‘It’s brutal. I have to kiss Rhea Perlman.’ Well, guess who happened to be listening … Jay Thomas was never seen on Cheers again.”

14. A CHEERS MINI-EPISODE WAS PRODUCED FOR THE U.S. TREASURY.

Early in Cheers’ run, its creators were contracted by the U.S. Treasury to create a special mini-episode to promote the purchase of U.S. savings bonds. Titled “Uncle Sam Malone,” the episode never aired on television nor is it included on any of the DVDs; it was intended to be screened for promotional purposes at savings bond drives only.

15. A “LOST” SCENE ALSO AIRED AS PART OF THE 1983 SUPER BOWL XVII PREGAME SHOW.

Back in early 1983, writers Ken Levine and David Isaacs wrote a special one-off scene to air before Super Bowl XVII in which Sam, Diane, Carla, Norm, Cliff, and NBC announcer Pete Axthelm bet on who will win the big game. “They ran it just before game time and it was seen by 80,000,000 people,” Levine recalled of the spot on his blog. “Nothing we’ve ever written before or since has been seen by that many eyeballs at one time. But the scene was never repeated. It never appeared on any DVDs. It just disappeared.” (Until now: You can watch it at the link above.)

16. TED DANSON WORE A HAIRPIECE TO PLAY HAIR-OBSESSED SAM

A fact that became apparent when he accepted the Emmy—sans hairpiece—in 1990. In the 1993 episode “It’s Lonely on the Top,” Sam shares his follicular challenge with Carla.

17. VIEWERS FREQUENTLY COMPLAINED ABOUT THE VOLUME OF THE LAUGH TRACK, EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO LAUGH TRACK.

In 1983, a quick disclaimer—spoken by one of the regular cast members—was added to the beginning of each episode: “Cheers was filmed before a live studio audience.” This was a direct response to viewer complaints that the “laugh track” was too loud.

18. THE PART OF FRASIER WAS WRITTEN FOR JOHN LITHGOW.

After recent roles in All That Jazz, Blow Out, and The World According to Garp (for which he received his first of two consecutive Oscar nominations), Lithgow was not interested in working on the small screen. “I just said, ‘No,’” Lithgow recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. “I barely even remembered that … It was like swatting away a fly … I just wasn’t going to do a series.”

19. KELSEY GRAMMER PLAYED FRASIER CRANE FOR 20 YEARS.

Grammer made his Cheers debut in the third season premiere in 1984. Though he was intended to be a short-lived character, Crane’s popularity with audiences led to him becoming a series regular. Four months after Cheers ended in May of 1993, Frasier made its debut (on the redesigned Cheers stage, no less) and ran for its own 11 seasons. Grammer’s two-decade run as the pretentious psychiatrist is a record-breaking one for an American comedy actor.

20. TONY SOPRANO’S MOM PLAYED FRASIER’S MOM, TOO.

Nancy Marchand’s character threatened to kill Diane. The role of Frasier’s mom was played by Tom Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson in a 2001 Frasier flashback.

21. KIRSTIE ALLEY IS THE ONLY MAIN CHARACTER WHO DIDN’T MAKE A GUEST APPEARANCE ON FRASIER.

Throughout Frasier’s 11-season run, Kirstie Alley was the only one of Cheers’ main actors to not make an appearance on the popular spinoff, possibly because the psychiatric profession conflicts with her beliefs as a Scientologist. “Kirstie once said … she’d never do a show about a psychiatrist,” Kelsey Grammer told Entertainment Weekly in 2002.

22. FRASIER’S DAD WAS MAGICALLY RESURRECTED FOR THE SPINOFF.

When Frasier talked about his family on Cheers, he noted that his father—also a well-respected psychiatrist—had passed away. Yet his ex-cop dad, played by John Mahoney, is a main character in Frasier. Incidentally, Mahoney made a one-off appearance in Cheers’ eleventh season, as a fast-talking jingle writer named Sy Flembeck:

23. NORM’S FIRST NAME IS HILLARY.

His full name is Hillary Norman Peterson.

24. THAT WOODY PLAYED WOODY WAS A TOTAL COINCIDENCE.

Though many of the non-regular bar patrons’ real names were used in filming, that Woody Harrelson ended up playing Woody Boyd is by sheer coincidence. The character’s name was written into the script long before any actors had auditioned for the role.

25. NORM DRANK “NEAR BEER.”

The bar on the set may have been fully functional, but that doesn’t mean the cast got to spend the day throwing back cold ones. Norm may have had it the worst. As the bar’s resident lush, he’s rarely seen without a sudsy glass of beer in his hand. But what’s really in that glass is “near beer,” a weakened strain of ale mixed with a bit of salt to keep a perfect head on the glass at all times. Which Wendt unfortunately had to consume on more than one occasion.

26. THE SHOW HELPED PROMOTE THE IDEA OF A DESIGNATED DRIVER.

It was important to the producers of Cheers that no tipsy bar patron ever drove him or herself home, so there are frequent references to calling cabs and designated drivers. The Harvard Alcohol Project had a hand in spreading this message.

27. SAM AND DIANE DID GET MARRIED AT THE END OF SEASON FIVE.

Because Cheers was filmed in front of a live studio audience, the producers had to occasionally trick the audience so that show developments weren’t leaked. In order to keep Shelley Long’s departure from the series a secret, the live audience saw Sam and Diane get married at the end of season five. The real ending—which sees Diane leaving for six months to finish her book, only to return for a guest appearance in the final season—was filmed on a closed set.

28. CHEERS HABLA ESPAÑOL.

In September 2011, a Spanish version of the series—also called Cheers—made its debut. It starred Alberto San Juan as a former soccer player turned Irish pub owner and ran for just one season.

29. THE END OF THE SHOW IS ALL TED DANSON’S FAULT.

Though understandably so. When Danson announced that he’d be leaving the series at the end of the 1992-1993 season, producers decided that Woody could take over the bar. But Woody Harrelson wasn’t interested in continuing the show without Danson, and so its series finale was set.

30. THE CAST AND CREW GOT REALLY, REALLY DRUNK FOR THEIR SENDOFF.

NBC made a major event of the series finale, with cast and crew celebrating at Boston’s Bull & Finch Pub, where thousands of fans gathered outside to watch the show on two Jumbotrons. Then the drinks started flowing … and flowing … and flowing. “The show ended at eleven,” Ken Levine wrote in a 2013 remembrance of the evening for Vulture. “The next half-hour was an emotional tsunami. Everyone was hugging and crying and doing a lot of drinking. We were all completely wrecked.”

Then it was time for the cast to make an appearance on The Tonight Show. “The cast, in no condition to face anybody, much less 40 million people, dutifully trooped downstairs to do the live show,” Levine continued. “Us non-celeb types stayed back and watched on TV … in horror. They were so drunk they needed designated walkers. They giggled like schoolgirls over nothing, fired spitballs into each other’s mouths, squirted water guns, Woody Harrelson implied he gave oral sex to both Ted Danson and Oliver Stone, and Kirstie Alley sang a song where the only lyric was ‘dick, dick, dick.’”

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, he couldn’t have foreseen how his humble creation would eventually lead to a global industry churning out millions of books each year. In the centuries since, new books continue getting published while old books pile up so that the total number of books that exist would be inconceivable to a man who placed every letter by hand. While counting up all the actual individual texts populating bookstores, public libraries, and private collections throughout the world would be a Sisyphean task, there might be a way to at least approximate how many unique book titles have ever been published.

Trying to determine how many books there are first raises a deceptively simple question: What is a book, anyway? That can get deeply philosophical very quickly, and there’s no single answer to it. The team behind Google Books (whose ambitious goal is to digitize all printed material, allowing unprecedented access to the world’s knowledge in a single database) came up with their own definition in 2010, in an attempt to answer this thorny query: What they refer to as a “tome” comprises an “idealized bound volume,” covering the range from a bestselling novel with copies available at every airport newsstand to a rare, leather-bound out-of-print edition to a single catalogued manuscript of someone’s PhD dissertation going quietly unread in a university collection.

On its surface, this definition replicates the concept underlying International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN), the universal identifiers for all books in the commercial marketplace. However, ISBNs have only existed since the mid-1960s and have yet to be widely adopted in non-Western regions of the world, so relying solely on that single number omits vast portions of printed material. Even when they are used, the process of assigning ISBNs isn’t particularly rigorous, so plenty of “book-like objects” that are definitely not books come with an ISBN: audiobooks, instructional DVDs, flash cards, etc. Relying solely on ISBNs to determine the number of published books offers a murky, unsatisfying answer.

Other institutions have attempted to standardize their comprehensive book catalogs, among them WorldCat and the Library of Congress, but these numbers are even more likely to be assigned in multiples to the same titles due to different cataloguing rules. Simple titles, author names, and publishing companies are less reliable still, as human error in transcribing all that information into a database can also lead to duplicates.

The success of Google Books’s attempt at solving this problem takes into account all these various shortcomings, and uses them to cross-reference nearly a billion raw records from 150 distinct providers to narrow down the number to just one of each book. After weeding out all the assumed duplicates, there are still certain non-book entries that need to be discarded, including two million videos, two million maps, and a turkey probe that was once added to a library card catalog as an April Fools’ Day joke. All told, Google Books came up with—drumroll, please!—129,864,880 books total. Phew.

But wait, there’s more! Despite Google’s best efforts, their algorithm fails to account for certain crucial factors: Not only is their calculation outdated, having been tallied in 2010, but it predates the recent surge in self-publishing, especially in digital formats. Though ISBNs are recommended for all titles, they are not required for self-published works carried in most e-book marketplaces, and there is no reliable system for keeping track of them otherwise. As the popularity of self-publishing increases, with nearly half a million new titles released in 2013 alone, the Google Books algorithm only gets further from reality.

Until Google updates its methodology, we can at least do a little extrapolation with the data we have to figure out a more accurate number of published books in existence in 2016. It’s a moving target, relies on unreliable ISBNs, and will require some educated guessing along the way, but here it goes anyway.

According to Bowker, the organization responsible for keeping track of all newly assigned ISBNs in the United States, the years 2011 to 2013 saw the publication of nearly one million new titles (and maybe a few reprints). A U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook statistic indicates that the United States produces about 40 percent of the world’s printed material; if it would be fair to assume that the U.S. is responsible for a similar percentage of non-printed text, it becomes possible to estimate a figure for total global book production, which comes out to about 2,267,265 new books published worldwide from 2011 to 2013.

More recent data is hard to come by, so the best way of filling in the gap between 2013 and now may be to average book production over the last three years (755,755 new titles annually worldwide) and add that to the 2013 total. After some basic arithmetic, it seems that a low threshold for the number of unique books in existence as of halfway through 2016 is (another drumroll, please) 134,021,533 total. And that’s all she wrote—for now, anyway.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. is home to a 19th century hang glider, the world’s first military airplane, and, as of June 28, the original Starship Enterprise. In case the museum hadn’t already made their excitement surrounding Star Trek’s 50th birthday this year apparent, they recently contracted linguist and language-creator Marc Okrand to record audio tours for them in Klingon, io9 reports.

Okrand knows Klingon better than anyone else on Earth. He first became involved in the Star Trek franchise in 1982 when he was asked to dub the Vulcan dialogue in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That led to him developing a complex Klingon language for the series and films, and eventually authoring The Klingon Dictionary.

Audio clips from the tour are now available to listen to on the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum website or through the museum’s GO FLIGHT app. For a look at Okrand’s recording process, you can watch the video below.

[h/t io9]

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If you’ve ever played Tetris, especially when it first came out in the 1980s, you probably remember it as being something that at least temporarily took over your life. The best video games can do that, but something about the simple nature of Tetris made it addictive like no other. Now, in a new graphic novel, Box Brown (whose last graphic novel was a biography of Andre the Giant) tells the story of how Tetris made its way from the mind of a software engineer in the Soviet Union to becoming one of the most popular video games of all time.

Tetris: The Games People Play comes out October 11, but in the meantime, Brown shared with mental_floss things you may not have known about Tetris, illustrated with scenes from his book.

1. TETRIS WAS CREATED BY A SOFTWARE ENGINEER IN MOSCOW.

BOX BROWN: “This is where Alexey Pajitnov was working when he created Tetris. He was employed by the government at the time. One of the things I found so compelling about Alexey was that he had no profit motive to create Tetris.  It’s pure inspiration and execution. Maybe he just did it because it could be done and it should be done. It’s something that can’t really be said about a lot of pieces of art.”

2. IT WAS INSPIRED BY THE A WOODEN PUZZLE GAME CALLED PENTOMINOES.

BOX BROWN: “A version of this game was marketed in the states as ‘Cathedral’ in 1985. I remember playing it at my cousin’s house when I was a kid. It was pretty competitive. The game was designed to look like you were building a little castle but it was really just a Tetris-like puzzle game.”

3. ITS ORIGINAL VERSION WAS ALL TEXT-BASED.

BOX BROWN: “The absolute first version of Tetris was made on a computer with no graphics capabilities. So, Alexey created his vision with text. Two brackets [] made up a block. His first conception of Tetris were these puzzle pieces falling from the sky and landing in a glass. The player had to rearrange them as they fell.”

4. THE NAME TETRIS WAS AN AMALGAMATION.

BOX BROWN: “Most players thought the name Tetris was weird when they first heard it. I guess it’s kind of weird looking back on it. The way the game was marketed in the U.S., it must have sounded like a very stern Russian word to American audiences. It’s so ubiquitous, it’s the perfect name. I wonder if people thought Xerox was a weird word at first?”

5. TETRIS STARTED OUT AS SHAREWARE.

BOX BROWN: “This scene was fun for me because I remember shareware. Before the internet you would save a game on a floppy disc and give it to a friend. It amazed me that the game still went ‘viral’ even though you had to physically meet the person, not to mention spend forever copying the game on the old machines. I have distinct memories of getting Wolfenstein via this method …”

Tetris: The Games People Play will be released October 11.

People create words all the time, but what makes the dictionary take notice? How does a word make the leap into the world of official recognition?

In this graphic, Merriam-Webster dishes some real talk on dictionary acceptance in simple terms. For more explanation of the steps in this chain, read the accompanying post and find out what they do—and don’t—care about.