NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Friday, June 5

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 brought to you by the number FOUR, or rather the word FOUR. Lots of 4 tiles on the board today, unsurprisingly, and we’ll need every 4 in our domino arsenal for these. The larger 4 groups require other pips. You can’t use the 0/4 domino in either of these, which means only the 2/2 domino will work in Purple 4. This means we know at least two domino locations right off the bat.

Step 1

Place the 4/4 domino from Purple 4 to Green 4 and the 2/2 domino in the Purple 4 tiles. The 3/4 domino goes below that, from Orange < 4 into Blue 4 and the 4/6 domino goes at the top from Pink 4 to Blue > 4. Hop down to the “U” and place the 4/0 domino from Dark Blue 4 into Purple =.

Step 2

The 0/0 domino goes in the next two Purple = tiles and the 0/3 domino goes from Purple 0 into Dark Blue > 0. Place the 5/5 domino in the bottom two Pink = tiles and the 5/4 domino from Pink = up into Green 4. Hop over to the “O” and place the 3/3 domino in Orange =.

Solution

The 6/6 domino goes in the top Dark Blue = tiles and the 6/2 goes from Dark Blue = down into Pink 4. Place the 1/1 domino in the remaining Pink 4 tiles. Move to the “R” and place the 4/1 and 4/2 dominos from Green 4 and Orange 4 into Blue < 4.

All told, a pretty straightforward Hard Pips though it did get a little tricky between the “U” and the “O” just figuring out which combination could line things up to make Pink 4 work. I had the 6’s down in the “U” originally and had to adjust so that I could get that 2 paired the 1/1.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Be sure to follow me for all your daily puzzle-solving guides, TV show and movie reviews and more here on this blog!