If you are a child of the 1980s or a fan of highly addictive video games, then you must love Tetris. I would spend hours upon hours twisting and turning those illuminated shapes, improving my spatial reasoning skills in the process. But what happens when you mash up one of the most popular games in history with a beloved autumn icon? You get the Pumpktris - a pumpkin that can be used to play Tetris.
According to Instructables: "Who wants grinning faces and candles when you can have an interactive pumpkin this Halloween? Play your favorite block-stacking game on an 8x16 grid carved into the face of the gourd, lit by LEDs and using the stem as a controller.
This is a moderately advanced project and requires experience soldering and programming in the Arduino environment. You'll be working with organic matter and all its inherent quirks, so measurements may need to be adapted to fit the pumpkin you're using."
According to HaHa Bird: "One of my habits is to write down all the crazy, fleeting ideas I have, then go back to review later rather than judging right off the bat, or even worse, forgetting them. Earlier in the month I was looking through that idea notepad and found “Make Tetris Pumpkins” from sometime last year. My original plan had been to make forms to shape pumpkins into Tetris pieces as they grew, then stack them together for Halloween. Since Halloween was only a few weeks away and it was too late to start growing pumpkins, I thought 'Why not make a pumpkin you can play Tetris on instead?'"
To learn more, read "Pumpktris - The Tetris Pumpkin" from Instructables and "Pumpktris" from HaHa Bird.