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
Tuesday is here and I have some medical stuff I need tended to — what fun! — so let’s keep this brief. Grab hold of some dominoes and let’s get to it!
Looking for Monday’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.
Here’s an example of a difficult tier Pips:
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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:
Another tower-grid style Hard Pips today. No doubles, as per usual. No 6 tiles, either, which means the one free tile we have *must* be the 6 since we only have one and it can’t go in any of the = groups. We’ll start down at the bottom.
Step 1
Since we know the 6 goes in the free tile, that means Dark Blue = will be all 3’s. Place the 6/3 from the free tile into Dark Blue = and the 5/0 domino next to that, from Green 5 into Pink 0. The 5/3 domino goes from Pink 5 into Dark Blue = and the 0/3 domino goes from Purple 0 into Dark Blue =.
Step 2
Given the no doubles factor, we can safely place the 5/2 domino from Blue 5 into Green 2 and the 5/1 domino from Orange 5 into Purple 1. The 4/3 domino goes above that from Blue 4 into Green = and the 1/4 next to that from Orange 1 into Dark Blue 4.
Step 3
Place the 2/0 domino from Dark Blue 2 up into Purple 0 and the 3/1 domino from Green = into Purple 1. The 0/1 domino goes from Pink 0 up into Orange 1 and the 0/4 domino goes from Blue 0 into Green =.
Solution
Plop the 2/4 domino from Orange 2 down into Green = and the 5/4 domino next to that, from Blue 5 over into Pink 4. The 2/1 domino goes from Dark Blue = down into Pink 1 and the 2/3 domino goes from Dark Blue = up into Purple 3. And that’s all she wrote!
Have a fantabulous Tuesday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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