Well we’ve burned right through summer. Like Wordle, Pips was born in the summer and will hopefully take flight in fall. It’s a great little game and currently my favorite out of all the NYTs Games app puzzles I play every day. It makes you think in a totally different way. It’s not so much about guessing (like Wordle) or just finding words (like Strands) and while I really do like Connections, it still feels like a cop out each time I have four Purple words leftover and just group them because that’s all that’s left. Pips adds a layer of strategy and observation that isn’t present in any of these other games. Let’s solve the first Pips of autumn!
Looking for Sunday’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 Solution
Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Difficult puzzle. Spoilers ahead.
Easy
Medium
Difficult
Let’s do a complete walkthrough of today’s Difficult Pips. It starts out like this:
This is clearly the letter “P” as in Pips or Pipsqueaks. Either that or it’s the layout of an apartment you’re considering renting. Not a terribly complex Pips as far as these go.
Step 1
The two things we know are true at first blush are: The Pink 0 group requires five blank tiles, and we only have five, so every single blank tile must go into Pink 0 from some other group or tile.
Because this is the case, the Green 4 group must use all of our 1 pip tiles, since there are only four of those and we can’t spare a blank tile.
I placed the 1/1 domino at the very bottom, then the 1/0 up into Pink 0 and the 1/3 into Orange 6. Then I placed the 3/0 from Orange 6 into Pink 0.
Step 2
The tricky part is now figuring out how to use our remaining dominoes to fulfill the Purple 9 group at the top. Based on what we have left, the Blue = group has to be 3’s. And based on our remaining blank tiles, we’ll need to be careful about placement. I had to juggle things around a couple times to get this right. Basically, since we don’t have anymore 3/0 tiles we’ll need to use a 4 and a 5 to complete the Purple 9.
With that in mind, I placed the 4/0 domino from Purple 9 down into Pink 0 and the 2/0 domino from the free tile into Pink 0.
Step 3
I finished up the Purple 9 by placing the spare 3/5 domino into the free tile and then used the 6/0 domino from Dark Blue >4 into Pink 0, wrapping up that group as well.
Solution
Two dominoes left. I placed the 3/3 domino into Blue = and the 3/2 from Blue = into the final free tile, and that’s a wrap!
While this Pips did stump me for a bit — I wasn’t sure at first if Purple 9 could be a 6/3 combo or a 5/4 combo, I was able to get here without too many fumbles. How did you do?
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