The final Friday of February has arrived and we have some Pips puzzles to solve. March is just around the corner, so grab some dominos and let’s get right to it!
Looking for Thursday’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. Sometimes there’s only one way to solve the puzzle. Other times, there can be two or more different solutions. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.
Today’s Pips Solutions 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.
Today’s Easy Pips
Today’s Medium Pips
Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
Today’s Hard Pips is tricky for two reasons. First off, you can do a lot of different 0/X combinations from Pink 0. Which of the various 0/X dominos feeds into Orange 3? Which into Purple 6? So many possibilities!
The other trick is ensuring you have 7 different numbers to fill up the 7-tile Purple ≠ group. These two combined mean some degree of trial and error is almost guaranteed. There’s also the Blue 3 group, which is something of a wildcard since it needs to be a single domino that adds up to three, so 1/2 or 0/3 basically.
Step 1
Start by placing the 4/0 domino from Purple 6 into Pink 0 and the 2/6 domino from Purple 6 into Dark Blue 12. Next, place the 0/0 domino in the next two Pink 0 tiles and the 0/2 domino from Pink 0 into Orange 3. The 1/3 domino goes from Orange 3 into Green 6.
Step 2
Next, place the 3/0 domino from Green 6 into the Blue 0 tile. The 6/1 domino goes from Dark Blue 12 into Purple ≠ and the 1/ 4 goes from Pink 3 into Purple ≠. The 1/1 domino goes directly adjacent, filling up the remaining Pink 3 tiles.
Solution
Place the 4/2 domino from the single free tile into Purple ≠. Next place the 1/2 domino in Blue 3. This leaves the 6/3 and 0/5 dominos which you can rearrange however you like in Purple ≠.
Not as challenging as yesterday’s Hard Pips but still a hard enough to lead me for a merry chase and start over.
How’d you do on today’s Pips? Let me know!
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