It turns out that all this rain we’ve been getting is definitely out of the ordinary. It’s the leftovers of hurricanes, the tail-end of massive storms that are a cool, wet reprieve for those of us in the high desert—but likely much less exciting for those caught up in the heart of the storm. I suppose I’ll take what I can get. We have a challenging Pips to solve today. Both the Medium and Hard tiers gave me trouble. Let’s dive right in!
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.
NYT Pips Today: Hints, Answers 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.
Easy
Medium
Hard
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
This is clearly an Oliphaunt, those mythical beasts from the east who so surprised Aragorn and Legolas and the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring when they met them in battle. You can see its trunk there on the left, though this Oliphaunt is without a tail.
This is quite the daunting Pips! We have 16 dominoes to lay down across all sorts of varying colorful tiles with different conditions. Surprisingly, I made exactly zero mistakes in today’s game. I’ve played Pips with six dominoes that stumped me more than this one. But I was quite daunted, and I had to make a lot of assumptions along the way. That they turned out to be right is likely a matter of luck, though I think I have my strategy down at this point. Mostly.
Step 1
There is one clear place to begin filling in this Oliphaunt. In the trunk we have a Purple 18 group. We have to use a 6/6 domino for the first two tiles. We also have a Dark Blue 4 group, and while I was less certain I was still pretty sure this would be four 1 pip tiles, so I placed the 1/1 domino at the bottom of the Oliphaunt’s front feet.
Step 2
This is when some guesswork was needed. I placed the 6/3 domino from Purple 18 up into Pink 6, the 3/4 domino from Pink 6 into Purple = and the 4/6 domino down from Purple = into Blue 12. Then I placed the 6/5 domino from Bue 12 into the Orange 5 tile.
Step 3
From here, I moved my attention to the legs. I was working with the assumption that Dark Blue 4 had to be all 1 pips, but at least one of my 1 pips had a 0 tile on the other half. This, I reasoned, would need to go into the Orange 0 group, since we only have 4 blank dominoes to work with. So I placed the 1/0 domino from Purple <2 into Orange 0 and the 2/0 domino from Green <3 into Orange 0.
Then I placed the 1/5 domino from Dark Blue 4 into Blue 10 and the 1/2 domino from Dark Blue 4 up into the free tile.
Step 4
I decided to finish up Orange 0 by placing the 0/4 domino from Orange 0 into Green 10 and the o/3 domino from Orange 0 into the free tile. Then the 6/2 domino slotted from Green 10 into Dark Blue 6.
Solution
I was surprised to see I had just three dominoes left, and when I realized they all would fit into the remaining tiles without an issue I was even more surprised and delighted. The 5/2 domino goes from Blue 10 into Dark Blue 6. The 4/2 domino goes from Pink ≠ into Dark Blue 6 and last, but not least, the 4/5 domino goes from the free tile into Pink ≠. Our Oliphaunt is ready for battle!
Some Pips look easy and end up being super hard. Today’s looked super hard and ended up being, if not easy, then at least very doable. Looking ahead is key. Figuring out what the larger groups will require is crucial. If you have an Orange 0 group with four tiles and only 4 dominoes with blank halves, you know you’ll need all of them to fill it out. Knowing this can shape what you place elsewhere. How did you do today?
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