Halfway through the work week and we come to Wednesday, or Odin’s Day as it was once known (or Woden’s Day, which makes the etymology more obvious). The All-Father and prime god of the Norse pantheon, Odin lives in Asgard and rules as king of the Æsir. Twin ravens accompany the deity: Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory) and two wolves, as well, Geri and Freki. He rides an eight-legged horse called Sleipnir. Fallen warriors gather in Odin’s hall, Valhalla. Odin was a god of sacrifice: He traded his eye for a drink from the Well of Mimir, to gain wisdom. He also hanged himself from the World Tree, Yggdrasil, in order to gain the secrets of the runic alphabet and their powerful magic.
We don’t think of these things when we think of the day, Wednesday. It’s just another day in the middle of the week, another day at the office, but what a rich mythology lays buried beneath the surface. In any case, Pipsqueaks, we have a Pips puzzle to solve. Shall we?
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.
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:
I think this looks like a baby bird. The ≠ sign from the pink group makes its tiny little beak. It has a big head and a little tail, which makes me think of Tweety Bird.
Step 1
It’s a bit of a tricky Pips to get started on. Everything here is either 0 tiles, ≠ groups or free tiles. There’s no obvious starting point, but it makes sense to start where you can only lay a domino in one direction. That would be the Dark Blue 0 tile in the tail and the Pink 0 tile in Tweety’s foot.
I ended up kind of randomly picking which dominoes I placed in these tiles and later had to go back and swap one out. But here’s how it’s done. Take the 0/2 domino and place it from Dark Blue 0 into Purple ≠ and the 0/1 domino and place it from Pink 0 into Purple ≠. You could do this the opposite way and it would make no difference. Now place the 0/0 domino from Green 0 into Orange ≠.
Step 2
We have two double dominoes left and the trick here is that they can’t be part of either = group, so we know we have to place them in two different sectors. I placed the 3/3 domino into Pink ≠ and the free tile. Then I finished up the two remaining 0 tiles. I placed the 0/3 from Purple 0 into the remaining free tile, and the 0/4 tile From Blue 0 into Orange ≠.
The remaining 1/1 domino went from Orange ≠ into Pink ≠ which left us with a 2/4 domino and a 2/3 domino. The 2/4 dropped into Pink ≠ and the 2/3 dropped into Orange ≠ and that was that! (Originally I had the 0/2 domino in Green 0 up into Orange ≠ which didn’t work so I just moved it to Dark Blue 0 / Purple ≠ and the 0/0 to where it had been and that solved the Pips).
Final Step
Overall, a bit of a guessing game today but once the ball was rolling it went smoothly enough.k How did you do?
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