Looking for help with today’s NYT Pips puzzles? You’ve come to the right place. Not only will you find strategies below, but full answers for each daily trio of Pips puzzles and a full walkthrough for the Hard Pips.
Tuesday is here and I am sore and tired from a combination of working out and clearing out a bunch of old stuff from my various storage sheds and organizing and generally staying busy from dusk till dawn every day. It’s a pace I probably can’t keep up for long, but while I can I aim to keep being super productive. This is my penance for procrastination. And I shall pay it. I shall also play today’s Pips! Dominoes, gather you shall!
Looking for Tuesday’s Pips? Read our guide right here.
How To Play Pips
In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored 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 the letter “H” as in Hard and the lower-case version “h” as in “herb” though do you say that with or without the “h” sound? Americans keep it silent, typically. Others “h” it loud and proud. Let’s begin.
Step 1
I started with the little “h” partly because I wasn’t entirely sure where to begin and I experimented a couple different ways before settling on this strategy. In any case, place the 3/1 from Dark Blue 3 into Purple = and the 1/5 from Purple = into Pink 5. Next, the 4/4 domino goes in Blue > 5 and the 0/0 domino fills out the final two Pink 5 tiles.
Step 2
Back to the big “H” place the 1/4 domino from Pink < 2 into Orange 9 and the 5/3 domino from Dark Blue > 4 into Orange 9. The 5/0 domino goes from Orange > 4 into Blue 7.
Solution
Pop the 1/1 domino from Purple < 3 into Blue 7 and the 6/3 domino from Blue 7 into Green 4. Last, but not least, place the 1/2 domino from Green 4 into Orange 9 and you’re done!
Have a terrific Tuesday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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