I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you were struggling with today’s NYT Pips puzzle. Both the Medium and Hard tiers really challenged me today, though it’s entirely possible that was my own brain being dysfunctional! The latest game in the NYT Games app is currently my favorite. The visual logic element is a nice change of pace from word games and I love all the observation and planning that goes into solving all three tiers each day. Let’s lay some dominoes!
Looking for Tuesday’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 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:
That Medium Pips was super challenging, but this one got me even more stuck. Two columns and lots of different ways that the dominoes can lay down on the right double-tile column. No clear place to begin.
The trick is deciphering what we absolutely need in the right column so we know what we can use to create the Purple 8 in the left column. What we need are:
- All three 6’s to fill in the Orange 12 and Pink 11 groups.
- Three of the 5’s to fill in the Blue 10 and Pink 11 groups.
- One of our two blank tiles must go in the Purple <1 tile, but since there’s a free tile next to it, we can’t say which or which direction this will go which means we can’t start here even though we know a blank tile has to go here.
This leaves us with no more 6’s and just one extra 5 and one extra blank tile. Given we have a Dark Blue > 3 in the left column, we’ll need some combination of 5’s, 4’s and 3’s to finish that side of the grid.
Step 1
Start by placing the 5/6 domino into the Pink 11 group. Place the 2/2 domino in the Blue = group on its right.
Step 2
Next, place the 5/3 domino from Blue 10 into Green 6 and the 6/0 domino from Orange 12 into Green 6. Then lay the 2/1 domino in the remaining Green 6 tiles.
We have a good sense of what we can use in the left column at this point, so place the 4/5 domino into Dark Blue > 3 down into Purple 8 and the 3/2 domino from Purple 8 into the free tile.
Solution
Next, place the 5/1 domino from Blue 10 into Pink ≠ and the 6/4 domino from Orange 12 into Pink ≠. Finally, the 0/1 domino can go from Purple <1 into the last remaining free tile, and we’re done!
This stumped me for a long time. I kept trying to place dominoes from Pink 11 across into Blue = but this left me with not enough 3’s or 4’s to finalize the Purple 8 group on the left. When I experimented by placing the 5/6 domino and the 2/2 domino vertically instead, everything fell into place. Tough one today! How did you do?
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