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
It’s Friday already, somehow, and I guess time just flies when you’re having fun — and when you have about a million doctor’s appointments and exams and scans and probes and all the rest of the fun stuff I’ve been dealing with this week. I prefer solving Pips puzzles! Let’s solve today’s, shall we?
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:
Today’s Hard Pips is a puppy dog. Or maybe a fox. It could even be a cat, or some other more exotic creature. Maybe it’s Momo, the adorable lemur from Avatar: The Last Airbender (read my review of the new Last Airbender movie that comes out this weekend here). We’ll go with Momo. And we’ll start with his cute little face. We only have one double and it needs to go in the tail area, which gives us a bit of direction as we begin.
Step 1
Start with the 5/0 domino from Green 5 into Purple = and the 6/0 domino from Pink > 4 into Purple =. The 0/3 domino goes from Purple = over into Orange = and the 3/1 domino goes from Orange = into Purple 1. Wrap up this step with the 2/3 domino from Pink 2 down into Dark Blue > 2.
Step 2
Move to Momo’s tail and place the 4/0 domino from Blue > 2 down into Dark Blue = and the 0/0 domino in the next Dark Blue = tiles. The 4/5 domino goes from Orange 4 down into Purple > 4 and the 4/3 domino goes from Blue > 3 down into Green 3.
Solution
Now we’ll do the legs. Place the 0/2 domino from Orange 0 into Pink 6 and the 4/1 domino from Pink 6 into the first free tile. The 2/1 domino goes from Dark Blue 2 into Blue 6 and the 5/3 domino goes from Blue 6 into the second free tile. We’re all done! Yip yip!
TGIF, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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