Looking for a little extra help with today’s challenging NYT Pips puzzles? We have the answers for the Easy and Medium Pips below, as well as an extensive walkthrough of the Hard Pips. I received several messages from readers about Monday’s Pips puzzle: It turns out there wasn’t one, or two, but three different ways it could be solved. Mine was just one of several! That’s pretty rare. I’ve seen two different solutions before, not never three. In any case, my walkthrough will show you one solution and let me know if you come up with a different one. Let’s solve this Pips, shall we?
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:
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. 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:
This is clearly another spaceship, though a rather blocky one. It’s also a real head-scratcher. There’s one reasonably clear place to begin, but even then figuring out to go after the first domino is tricky. We know a couple things just glancing at the board:
- First, we need to make two groups of 20 which can be achieved with all 5’s or a combination of 4’s and 5’s.
- Second, we need to make one group of 17, which can be made a variety of ways but my first thought is we’ll need three 5’s and a 2.
- On the other half of the board, the big 9 group will need at least a few smaller Pips — and we need to save one 6 for the Blue 6 tile.
Step 1
Begin by placing the 1/3 domino from the Purple 1 tile into the Pink < 4 tile. Next, place the 6/6 domino in the top two tiles of the Blue 20 group. The 4/5 domino will go from Blue 20 down into Purple 20 and the 4/3 tile will go from Blue 20 into Orange = like so:
Step 2
Next, place the 3/2 domino from Orange = into the Dark Blue 17 group. Place the 5/5 domino below that into the next two tiles of the Dark Blue 17 group. Move back over to Purple 20 and place the 5/2 domino from there into Pink 5.
Step 3
We’ll wrap up Dark Blue 17 with the 5/6 domino down into the free tile. I know I always suggest ending with a free tile, but we need to get rid of this big domino because we basically know it can’t fit into Green 9. Besides, we have one more free tile to end on.
Next, place the 5/3 domino from Purple 20 into Pink 5 and the 5/1 domino from Purple 20 into Green 9 (though you can also use the 5/0 domino here, it won’t matter either way).
Solution
Place the 6/1 domino fro Blue 6 into Green 9 and the 5/0 (or 5/1) domino into the next two Green 9 tiles. Finish up by placing the 2/6 domino from Green 9 into the last remaining free tile, and you’re done!
Like I said, this was a real head-scratcher and at first I was trying to fit the 5’s in the Blue 20 Group, but that left me without the double 5 domino I needed for Dark Blue 17. Replacing the 5’s with the 6’s and 4’s in Blue 20 and moving the 5’s down into Purple 20 made this all come together. How did you do?
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