Another week spreads out before us, filled to the brim with opportunity should we only reach out and take advantage of it—whatever “it” may be. My plan is to continue to get back into my workout routine. I’m a member of OrangeTheory, a HIIT gym, and the end of October is Hell Week. Each day of Hell Week is a theme and people are encouraged to wear costumes in the spirit of the Halloween season. The classes are all extra challenging, too, and I need to train hard to be ready. I also need to continue keeping my wits sharp, so let’s solve today’s Pips!
Looking for Sunday’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.
NYT Pips Today: Hints and Answers for Saturday, October 4
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 6 and it’s actually quite clever. There are only six dominoes available. There are only = 6’s in the puzzle (and = group, and one is a >6). Despite being a smaller Pips today (the smallest I’ve ever seen for the Hard tier) this is quite challenging!
Step 1
What really threw me off is just figuring out which numbers went in the two = groups and then how to make the other 6 groups work. I tried the 5’s up top, but that didn’t work. I thought maybe the 2’s were up top and the 5’s were below, but that didn’t work either.
To solve today’s Pips, begin with the 6/2 domino from Pink 6 into Purple =, then lay the 2/0 domino from Purple 2 into Blue 6.
Step 2
Next, slot the 6/5 domino from Blue 6 into Orange 6 and the 1/5 domino from Orange 6 into Dark Blue >6.
Solution
Finally, the 4/6 domino goes from Dark Blue >6 into Green = and the 6/0 goes from Green = up into Blue 6. And we’re done!
Maybe it’s just me, but for whatever reason I didn’t expect the Green = block to be 6’s and that made me try out all sorts of other options first. The 6’s everywhere threw me off, or I’m tired. Who knows? Either way, we got it done!
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