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TYDINGS HALL — Several rows behind where you are currently sitting in the lecture hall for your three-credit weed-out class, players of the sliding tile puzzle video game 2048 are secretly organizing a competitive league. Having come to a mutual agreement that no one is truly paying attention to what the professor or his PowerPoint slides are saying, over half a dozen fellow students have opened additional browser tabs on their laptop computers and begun squaring off with each other in the popular time killer game.

Via notes manually passed from student to student, the UMD Hare was able to reach the rearmost seats and get in touch with Letters and Sciences major Atencións Pangon, the first person to throw in the towel and start playing 2048 for the rest of the lecture.

“We decided that whoever has the highest scoring game by the time class is dismissed wins,” Pangon answered when asked to outline the conditions of the competition. “Our first thought was to play until someone actually gets a block to 2048, but no one here is capable of doing that in 50 minutes. This game is way too hard.”

The ruleset for the league, tentatively titled “2048 4U” until someone thinks of a name that’s actually good, include a minimum alternative browser tab count of three “study note” tabs per player in case someone walks by and looks at a player’s screen. Participants have also agreed to ban the usage of “powerups” available in later versions of the game that allow players to prevent a game-over or correct a mistake. “This isn’t a casual league, sorry,” claimed Grant “Button” Masha, three-time University of Maryland Flappy Bird Classic Series champion and recent 2048 comp scene entry. “This is for people who can really focus and do well in their endeavors.”

2048 was developed and released in 2014 by Italian video game developer Gabriele Cirulli as part of a conspiracy to lower the grades of American college students and enable Italian global academic domination. It is available for download on GitHub, unless you’re not a complete nerd, in which case it can be found on iOS, Android, and via web browser at play2048.co.

Live coverage of “2048 4U” is expected to resume once the professor stops walking behind everyone and the players can tab back to the game. At sportsbooks throughout the state, many wagers have been placed on Masha winning the current matchup, as well as on the notion that no one sitting behind you is getting a grade above B- for this class.