I’m a big fan of the latest NYT puzzle game. Pips only launched about a week ago, but it seems like it’s already picking up steam. If you like playing dominoes—either the actual game or just lining ‘em up and knocking ‘em down—then you should definitely give this one a try. Read on for an explainer on how the game works and help with today’s three puzzles.
Looking for Monday’s Pips solutions? Read yesterday’s guide right here.
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:
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
Read on for the solutions for the Easy and Medium puzzles and a guided walk-through of the Difficult Pips. Spoilers, obviously.
Easy
This Easy Pips actually threw me for a loop, briefly, though in my defense I was distracted at the time.
Medium
This was a bit more difficult, and the shape — basically a lower-case ‘h’ — was amusing.
Difficult
Every day, I walk through the Difficult tier puzzle step-by-step.
For Tuesday’s Pips, we have a grid that looks like this:
Sometimes I’ll look for single boxes that have a set quantity. In today’s Puzzle we have a Purple Box (4), an Orange Box (0) and a Blue Box (6). We also have a Pink box that has to be less than 2, which could either be 1 or Blank.
This was a bit much to work with, so I went to the top left corner and noticed that the purple boxes had to equal 10 and the pink boxes had to equal 1. I looked for dominoes that could do that. There were no double 5’s and there was no 1/Blank domino. I decided the most likely pieces were the 4/1 domino and the 6/Blank domino and plopped them in. Like so:
Just below, three blue boxes needed to equal one another and two orange boxes needed to equal 12. The only way to equal 12 is to have two 6’s. I plugged in one 3/6 at the top going left to right, a double 3 domino to round out the blues, and the 6/4 domino to finish the orange boxes. I knew it had to be the 6/4 domino because at the bottom of the puzzle is the “less than 2” pink box next to the 6 blue box. The only thing this could be now is the 6/1 domino. Like so:
At this point I had three dark blue tiles that needed to not equal one another, three green boxes that did and a couple single stragglers. Just a quick glance at what remained made it clear that the Orange 0 needed to go with the 3/0 domino, since it was the only one remaining with a 0. That meant that all three green tiles needed to be 3. 3/4 domino went above that one, and then a vertical 3/2 domino plopped the 2 into the dark blue tiles. That left us with a 5/4 domino with the 5 in blue and the 4 in grey, and voila presto! We are done!
This was a lot easier than yesterday’s Pips, or I just had an easier time visualizing it today. I’m not sure. I’ve only been playing this game for a few days, so it’s possible my strategy is getting better or that the challenge each day is just very different, which is certainly how plenty of other NYT puzzle games are. I like this a lot though. It’s very simple and elegant. What do you think of it so far?
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