Looking for help with today’s NYT Pips puzzles? You’ve come to the right place. Not only will you find strategies below, but full answers for each daily trio of Pips puzzles and a full walkthrough for the Hard Pips.
My dearest of Pipsqueaks, ladies and gentlesqueaks, solver of domino puzzles, we have three Pips puzzles to solve this fine Sunday and I say we get right down to it!
Looking for Saturday’s Pips? Read our guide right here.
How To Play Pips
In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored 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 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. Sometimes there’s only one way to solve the puzzle. Other times, there can be two or more different solutions. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.
Today’s Pips Solutions And Walkthrough
Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Hard puzzle. Spoilers ahead.
Today’s Easy Pips
Today’s Medium Pips
Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
Today’s Hard Pips is “R” and “r” as in Rock and roll. Which is what we’re going to do solving this thing. The first obvious clue is the Dark Blue 5 tile, since we have only two 5’s and one of them is 5/0 which can’t possibly work with a two-tile Blue 7. Everything sort of flows from this revelation.
Step 1
Place the 5/1 from Dark Blue 5 into Blue 7 and the 6/4 domino from Blue 7 into Pink 4. The 0/5 domino goes from Pink 4 into Purple 8 (and now we’re out of 5’s) and the 3/1 goes below that from Purple 8 into Orange 3.
Step 2
Now we know that we have to go down from Orange 3 because there are only three tiles beneath it, so place the 2/0 domino from here to Purple 12 and the 6/6 domino in the next two Purple 12 tiles. Next, place the 0/6 domino in the top two Green 12 tiles and the 6/1 domino (our last 6) from Green 12 into Pink 9.
Solution
The 4/4 domino finishes up both Pink 9 and the “R” and we hop over to the little “r” and toss the 2/4 domino from Dark Blue 2 into Blue = and the 4/3 domino from Blue = into Orange > 2. Easy peasy.
Have a sunny Sunday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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