Pips, Pips, Pips and more Pips! Today’s Pips is rather challenging, mostly because the Medium puzzle is as hard as some Hard puzzles! In fact, today I’m doing a walkthrough for both, so let’s get right to it!
Looking for Tuesday’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 and Answers for Saturday, October 4
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
Today’s Medium Pips is pretty tricky, so I’m doing a step-by-step walkthrough here as well. It starts like this:
This is as big as many Hard Pips, quite frankly, and as difficult as some. The trick here is looking at the three points on the outside. There’s a Pink 2 adjoining a Dark Blue 12 group; a Purple 6 just about a Pink 3 group; and a Blue 5 next to a Purple 18 group.
Step 1
This means we can definitely start with a 2/6 domino and a 5/6 domino on the left and right. I’m still not 100% sure about the Purple 6 since it could be a couple different dominoes. However, I do know we’ll need a 6/0 from Dark Blue 12 into Blue 0.
Step 2
Based on the dominoes we have left, I believe we’ll need to use the 4’s in Orange = at the bottom. Place the 4/6 domino from Orange = into Purple 18, the 4/5 domino from Orange = into Green = and the 4/0 domino from Orange = into Blue 0.
We’ll finish off the Blue 0 group with the 1/0 domino from Pink 3.
Solution
Next, place the 6/1 domino from Purple 6 into Pink 3 and the 1/5 domino from Pink 3 into Green =. We’ll slot the 3/6 domino from Orange 6 into Purple 18 and wrap things up with the 3/5 domino in Orange 6 up into the single free tile.
That’s all for the Medium Pips today, let’s move on to Hard!
Hard
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
This is certainly a more puzzling Pips than the Medium, with very few clues on where to begin. We have lots of 1’s and 11’s and a couple = groups and one ≠ group. There’s no obvious starting point, but we can make a few assumptions. By far the most plentiful number on our dominoes today is 1, so I’m going to assume that’s what goes in the Blue = group, even though we also have a couple 1 tiles to fulfill.
Step 1
The Pink <1 tile has to be a 0, so I placed the 0/1 domino here into the Blue 1 group. You have to start somewhere! From here, I placed the 0/3 domino from Blue 1 into Purple ≠ and the 4/1 domino from Purple ≠ down into Blue =.
Next, I placed the 1/5 domino from Blue = into Green 11 and the 1/1 domino into the remaining Blue = tiles.
Step 2
The reason I was confident that Pink = would be 0’s is the double 0 domino and the fact that there weren’t enough 4’s left to make this work unless I swapped out the 1/4 domino I’d already used (but then I’d be short a 1). I needed a double to make the left two tiles work, so I placed the 0/0 domino in Pink =. Next, I placed the 0/6 domino from Pink = into Dark Blue 11 and the 1/3 domino from the Orange 1 tile into the free tile.
Solution
The 5/6 domino can finish two groups. I slotted this into Dark Blue 11 over into Green 11. Then I placed the 4/4 domino into the left Purple 11 tiles and the 3/1 domino from Purple 11 into the final free tile. And that’s all it took!
Kind of a fun extra challenge today with a tougher-than-usual Medium Pips and a very tricky Hard Pips, but it was doable. Sometimes the really hard ones just hurt my brain! Ah well, what doesn’t kill you (mostly) makes you stronger . . . .
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