Looking for a little help with today’s Pips puzzles? The NYT Games app’s newest game is a hit, but sometimes it can be super challenging. Today’s Hard Pips is one of the toughest I’ve seen in awhile, so definitely check out our walkthrough below. Even the Medium-tier Pips was tricky today. We have some colorful tiles to fill and some dominoes to lay down, so let’s get right 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:
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
Today’s Hard Pips Walkthrough
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
Today’s Hard Pips looks like a large spaceship in the Imperial fleet. Then again, most of these look like dogs and spaceships to me. It’s quite intimidating as well. We have numerous groups and individual tiles with tons of different conditions. I believe every condition in the game is represented, from = to totals to both > and < as well as ≠ and a single free tile. So where to begin?
Step 1
While it’s not the most obvious starting point, I like total groups that can only be filled with specific tiles. 6’s and blanks. We have a Purple 12 group and a Dark Blue 18 group and we know we can only fill those with 6’s. Furthermore, we know we’ll need all of our 6’s for these tiles. There are no 0/6 dominoes so the 1/6 domino has to go from Dark Blue < 2 up into Purple 12.
Looking ahead at some of our tiles I can make a few more assumptions: First, the Pink 4 group will likely be two 2 pips. Second, the Green = will likely be 4 pips given we have quite a few 4’s including a 4/4 domino.
Place the 6/2 domino from Purple 12 into Pink 4. Next, place the 6/3 domino from Dark Blue 18 up into Pink ≠ and the 6/4 domino from Dark Blue 18 into Green = like so:
Step 2
We’ll tackle the top right next. We need to use two 5’s for the Orange > 9 group, so place the 0/5 domino from Purple < 3 up into Orange >9. Next, place the 5/3 domino from Orange > 9 into Blue = and the 3/2 domino from Blue = into Pink 4.
Step 3
We should assume that Pink = will be 2’s since we need 1’s in the Orange 1 tile and Green 1 tile. Place the 4/2 domino from Green = into Pink = and the 4/4 domino in the remaining Green = tiles. Use our second-to-last double domino by placing the 2/2 into the remaining Pink = tiles.
Step 4
Place teh 1/0 domino from Green 1 into Blue 0 and the 1/1 domino from Orange 1 into Pink ≠ like so:
Solution
Next, place the 0/2 domino from Blue 0 into Pink ≠ and the 4/3 domino from Pink ≠ up into the single free tile, and we’re done!
Sometimes Pips puzzles look easy and end up being super hard. Today’s looked super hard, but if you counted your pips and surveyed the field, it wasn’t so bad. Knowing that all five 6 pips had to be used in those two groups really helped, and mapping out the = groups made it pretty obvious what needed to go where. How did you do?
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