I’m off on an adventure this weekend (though it’s work-related) but I’ll still be guiding all you fine Pipsqueaks toward Pips victory. It’s Saturday and it’s raining and I almost hate to leave such a lovely climate behind, but sometimes them’s the breaks. Let’s solve this Pips!
Looking for Friday’s Pips? Read our 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 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 “greater than.” If there are multiple tiles with > or < signs, the total of those tiles must be greater or less than the listed number. It varies by grid. Blank spaces can have anything. The various possible conditions are:
- = All pips must equal one another in this group.
- All pips must not equal one another in this group.
- > The pip in this tile (or tiles) must be greater than the listed number.
- < The pip in this tile must be less than the listed number.
- An exact number (like 6) The pip must equal this exact number.
- Tiles with no conditions can be 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. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.
Today’s Pips Solution
Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Difficult puzzle. Spoilers ahead.
Easy
Medium
Difficult
Let’s do a complete walkthrough of today’s Difficult Pips. It starts out like this:
This is very obviously a dog, which seems to be a favorite for the Pips puzzle-setters over at the New York Times. There are lots and lots of different conditions, small groups and single tiles here to navigate. Our best bet is looking to the extremities and finding very specific conditions that need to be filled.
Step 1
You could probably start at the tail and be okay, but I prefer starting at the most specific location possible and as far as I can tell, that’s the front foot. We know that the first domino has to be either a 3/0 or a 3/1, since Dark Blue 3 has to spill over into Blue 1. There’s not a 3/0 so I started by laying the 3/1 domino here.
The next domino has to be a 0/1 since it goes from Blue 1 into Green 1. I placed that and moved to the back leg. The Pink 18 is the group to look for now, since we know it requires three 6’s and we only have three 6’s total. I placed the 4/2 domino from Green 4 into Orange = and the 2/6 domino from there into Pink = like so:
Step 2
Next, I finished up Pink = by placing the 6/0 domino up into Orange 0 and the 6/1 domino from Pink = into Dark Blue ≠. That group is the largest on the board, with a total of 5 tiles that all have to be different numbers. I figured it would be easiest to work around it, filling in everything else first and hoping we’d have the right dominoes left over.
Step 3
I moved to the tail and placed the 5/3 domino from Blue 5 into Pink =. The 3/4 domino I slotted from Pink = into Purple 4, and the 2/0 domino went from Dark Blue 2 into Orange 0. This left us with just the head of the dog and a bit of its upper torso.
Solution
At this point, I had several doubles: A 1/1, a 2/2, a 4/4, a 3/3 and a 0/0.
Both 2’s and 1’s could fill the Purple = group, but we already have a 1 in Dark Blue ≠ and we need the 2’s for Orange 2 and Blue 2, so I placed the 1/1 domino in Purple = and the 1/5 domino from Purple = down into Dark Blue ≠. I placed the 3/3 domino from Green 3 into Dark Blue ≠.
Next, the 4/4 domino went from Purple 4 into Dark Blue ≠ and then I placed the 2/2 domino from Blue 2 up into the final Dark Blue ≠ slot. The 2/1 domino fit perfectly in Orange 2 up into Pink 1 and that left us with just the 0/0 domino to fill in the free tiles on the dog’s nose. Voila!
This was a tricky one simply because there were so many things to consider, but careful planning meant that I didn’t have to do any rearranging and the only place I got very hung up was at the end, trying to determine which number should go into the Purple = group. Otherwise, not too shabby! How did you do?
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