Looking for help with today’s Easy, Medium and Hard NYT Pips puzzles? Whether you’re after a nudge in the right direction or just want to compare notes, below you’ll find everything you need to solve each of today’s Pips plus a full walkthrough for today’s Hard Pips.
TGIF Pipsqueaks! Friday is here at last and then the weekend. No big 4th of July stuff this weekend, but this Sunday is my son’s 16th birthday, so that’s pretty neat! I just turned 45, so that means I’ll turn 47 when my son hits 18 with three whole years of my 40s left and all my kids flown the nest. Or, well, they might not have flown the nest, but all grown up. There are perks to being a younger parent. In any case, it’s Pips time! Let’s throw some dominoes!
Looking for Thursday’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.
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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. 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:
The alphabet continues with big G and little g today. It’s a pretty challenging Hard Pips with no super clear place to start. I figured I’d try to get rid of some of the larger pips in my domino stash before moving over to the little g with its two 3 groups.
Step 1
Start with the 4/5 domino from Blue 4 into Pink 8 and the 3/6 domino from Pink 8 into Purple > 10. The 6/6 domino goes from Purple > 10 down into Orange 10 and the 4/3 slides in below that, from Orange 10 down into Pink 3. Now hop over to little g.
Step 2
Place the 5/1 domino from Green = over into Purple 3 and the 5/5 domino below that in the next two Green = tiles. The 2/0 domino goes from Purple 3 down into Orange = and the 0/5 goe from Orange = into Green =. The 0/1 domino goes below that from Orange = down into the second Purple 3 group and the 1/1 domino fills in the remaining Purple 3 tiles. Place the 0/0 domino in Green = and then hop back to the big G.
Solution
The 4/4 domino goes in the top tiles of Dark Blue 11 and the 3/1 domino goes below that from Dark Blue 11 into Blue =. The 1/6 domino goes from Blue = into Dark Blue 8 and the 2/2 domino finishes things off from Dark Blue 8 into the one and only free tile.
With so many doubles and so many different ways to make a lot of these groups work, I had to shuffle things around a lot today, but I got there eventually.
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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