Rain has come to the mountain. Thunderstorms and lightning, very very frightening. But good for these dry forests and good for the soul. You know what else is good for the soul? Solving today’s Pips puzzle, the latest game in the New York Times Games app. Let’s solve it, 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:
As always, the trick here is to identify which tiles can only be used one way. This is a tough one because the only conditions are Total groups. There are no = or less than or greater than or anything else. I started by looking for a total value that matched just one domino. That was the Blue 4, which I placed with the blank half up into the Purple 9 group. There was also a Dark Blue 5 tile, so I put the 5/5 domino there up into Purple 9. To complete the Purple 9 group, I slotted the 2/2 domino into the top left. Like so:
From here, I placed the 2/1 domino into the Pink 2 tile, down into the Orange 7 group. Then I placed the 6/1 domino into the Purple 6 tile and the Pink 1 tile. At this point, I was just using my best guesses. It was possible I’d still have to backtrack, but so far, so good:
With just three dominoes remaining, I finished up the Orange 7 group with the 3/3 domino and placed the 3/6 domino into the Green 3 tile, down into the Blue 8 group. Now I knew I was on the right track and placed the 1/1 domino into the final 2 Blue 8 tiles like so:
We’ve had a lot of Difficult tier Pips puzzles lately that have mostly Total groups, sometimes with an = group thrown in, but very few less or greater thans to deal with, and nary a does not equal to be seen. This creates its own challenge, but also keeps things . . . well . . . kind of simple. Hopefully we get a more challenging entry soon!
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