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
Is it the weekend already? This week has gone by in a blur, quite literally. I’m exhausted. I’d say I’m ready for the weekend, but I tend to work even more on weekends so . . . what can you do? Solve a few Pips puzzles I suppose. Shall we?
Looking for Friday’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 crafty little elephant with lots of doubles and all sorts of ways you can almost get it right while just missing and having to start all over from scratch. I definitely had to try out a few different combos before getting to the solution. We’ll start in this mischievous elephant’s trunk.
Step 1
Place the 2/6 domino from Purple 2 into Dark Blue = and the 6/1 from Dark Blue = into Pink =. The 4/4 domino goes above that in the left tiles of Purple = and the 0/1 domino goes from Green 0 up into Pink =.
Step 2
Place the 4/1 domino from Purple = down into Pink = and the 1/1 domino in the remaining Pink = tiles. The 2/4 domino goes from Purple 7 into Orange = and the 5/6 domino goes from Purple 7 into Pink =.
Step 3
Place the 4/0 domino from Blue 7 into Orange 0 and the 3/4 domino from Blue 7 over into Orange =. The 4/6 domino goe from Orange = into Pink = and the 6/6 domino goes in the bottom two Pink = tiles.
Solution
Place the 5/5 domino in Dark Blue = and the 5/3 domino from Dark Blue = down into Blue =. The 6/3 domino goes from Green 6 into Blue = and the 3/3 domino fills in the remaining Blue = tiles. And you’re done!
Happy weekend, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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