NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Saturday, June 6

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. 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 another…let’s call them Doom Grids. They’re always a little trickier, though today’s wasn’t as bad as it looked. We have four free tiles and no doubles. While we do have a couple > tiles, we have an abundance of 6’s as well. Some wiggle room. With no doubles, you can identify a really good starting point, too, down in the bottom right corner. The Pink 2 can’t pair with the Purple 2, so it has to be paired with the 5. That’s where we’ll begin.

Step 1

Place the 2/5 domino from Pink 2 over into Purple 5. Next, place the 2/6 domino above that from Purple 2 into the first free tile. The 2/1 domino goes directly next to that from Green 2 into Purple 1. Move to the left side of the board and place the 6/4 domino from Blue 6 into Pink 4 and the 2/3 domino from Blue 2 into Green 3.

Step 2

Place the 5/4 domino from Purple > 3 into Pink 4 and the 3/0 domino next to that, from Blue 3 into Orange 0. The 0/4 domino goes vertically to the right of that, from Dark Blue 0 down into Green 4 and the 0/6 domino goes next to that, from Dark Blue 0 into the second free tile. Left of that, place the 0/5 domino from Blue 0 down into Orange 5.

Solution

The 3/1 domino goes in the middle, from Dark Blue 3 down into Orange 1. The 5/1 domino goes from Dark Blue 5 over to Green 1. Toss the 4/3 domino up in the top right corner, from Purple 4 into Green > 1. Now, place the 5/3 domino from Blue 5 into the third free tile and the 4/1 domino from Dark Blue 4 into the fourth and final free tile. And that’s all!

Have a great Saturday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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