The newest game in the NYT Games suite is called Pips. You can read all about it right here. Basically, it’s a visual puzzle that requires you to fill in a bunch of blank squares with a selection of dominoes. Each square has different conditions and there’s only one way to solve each puzzle.
I’m really enjoying this game, and I thought I’d add it to my rotation of Wordle, Strands, Mini Crossword and Connections guides. Let’s dive right in!
How To Play Pips
In Pips, you have a grid of multicolored boxes. Each colored area represents a different “condition” that you have to achieve. You have a select number of dominoes that you have to spend filling in the grid. You must use every domino and achieve every condition properly to win. There are Easy, Medium and Difficult tiers.
Here’s an example of a difficult tier Pips:
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As you can see, the grid has a bunch of symbols and numbers with each color. On the far left, the three purple squares must not equal one another (hence the equal sign crossed out). The two pink squares next to that must equal a total of 0. The zig-zagging blue squares all must equal one another. You can click on dominoes to rotate them, and will need to since they have to be rotated to fit where they belong. Not shown on this grid are other conditions, such as “less than” or “more than.” It varies by grid. Blank spaces can have anything.
In order to win, you have to use up all your dominoes by filling in all the squares, making sure to fit each condition.
Today’s Pips Solution
I’m going to just post the solution for Easy and Medium, then go into a bit more detail and depth on Difficult. Spoilers ahead.
Easy
Today’s Easy Pips is quite easy, but a good warm-up for the next two.
Medium
This was a bit more difficult, but still pretty straightforward.
Difficult
Let’s walk through the Difficult tier puzzle step-by-step. The best way to begin any of these is to do a couple quick calculations. You’ll need to know the quantity of each “pip” especially if you have groups that have to equal one another, or single values that have to be achieved.
I look for single boxes that have defined values first. In this puzzle, there are two single boxes that require 1 pip. There are only two dominoes with 1 pip, so we know that one of these will have to go in each of those boxes.
In today’s puzzle, there are also three groups (blue, pink and orange) of four that all must equal one another. The two 1-pip dominoes have second values of 3 and 5. There are four 3’s but only two 5’s. This means that one of the 1 pip dominoes has to go into one of those three groups, while the other one can’t. There are 5 blank dominoes, four 3-pip dominoes and four 4-pip dominoes total, so we know that the three = groups of four have to be: Blank, 3 and 4 since only those numbers are enough to fulfill these requirements.
Once you sort this out, you can start to test things. The 1/3 domino goes in the top left boxes. There is also one Blank/3 domino and one 3/4 domino. These can continue filling in the pink boxes, spilling over left into the blue group and down into the orange group. We know that the 4 pip has to be in orange based on the green group at the bottom. We’ll get to that next.
The final boxes we haven’t discussed are the green ones that must equal 11, so a 5-pip and a 6-pip have to go side-by-side. We don’t have a 6/5 domino, so we know two separate dominoes must be used. We have one 6/4 domino, one 5/1 domino and one 5/blank domino. Since we have 5 Blank dominos total, we won’t need all of those to fill in the blue group. That means we can use the 5/blank domino along with the 6/4 domino to fill in the green group, and use the 5/1 domino to fill in the final single box.
At this point, we have all the tough stuff out of the way and it’s just a matter of placing the remaining dominoes, like so:
It can be a bit of a mind-bender trying to sort these out, but if you always start with the boxes that must have a specific value and work your way from there, it’s not so tough. Of course, sometimes you misplace something or have to undo what you’ve placed and start over, but that’s the challenge that makes the game fun!
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