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
Thunder rolls as I type this NYT Pips guide. Distant thunder and that faroff petrichorial rainscent. Lovely, moody perfection. Would that every afternoon was a monsoon lingering on the horizon, then glorious downpour. But I digress. We have dominoes to fit into colorful tiles in today’s Pips puzzle, which continues the “do re mi fa sol la ti do” series after a few days off.
Looking for Wednesday’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:
Doe a deer, a female deer. Ray, a drop of golden sun. Me, a name I call myself. Far, a long long ways to run. And so on and so forth. We’re working our way through do re mi fa sol la ti do in the Hard Pips lately, and maybe this is the last one. I can’t keep track. In any case, I started this off by trying to figure out which double would get me from Dark Blue = in the “D” to Purple 3 to Blue 11. That’s where we’ll begin.
Step 1
Of all our doubles, only 2/2 looked like it would work here. Place the 2/2 in Dark Blue = and the 2/0 from Dark Blue = up to Purple 3. The 3/5 slides above that from Purple 3 into Blue 11. Now toss the 0/1 domino in the top of Orange 1 since we’ll need the 0/0 domino in Step 2.
Step 2
Place the 0/0 domino in the bottom tiles of Orange 0 and the 0/5 from Orange 0 up into Green 9. The 1/4 domino goes from Green 1 up into Pink 7 and the 3/3 domino goes from Pink 7 up into Dark Blue 9. You can throw the 0/6 domino over in the “D” from Orange 1 to Blue > 0 since it’s the only domino left that can go there.
Solution
Place the 6/5 domino from Blue 11 up into Purple 13 and then the 4/4 in the remaining Purple 13 tiles. “D” is done so go back to “O” and place the 4/6 domino from Green 9 into Pink 22 and the 5/5 domino in the next two Pink 22 tiles. The 6/6 domino finishes things off from Pink 22 down into Dark Blue 9. And that’s a wrap!
I hope you have a lovely Thursday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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