Looking for help with today’s Easy, Medium and Hard NYT Pips puzzles? Whether you’re after a nudge in the right direction or just want to compare notes, below you’ll find everything you need to solve each of today’s Pips plus a full walkthrough for today’s Hard Pips.
Friday is here at last, Pipsqueaks. The FIFA World Cup kicks off, which explains why we’ve been getting Hard Pips puzzles spelling out CUP and FUT and, I suspect, BOL soon enough. Most people call it futbol rather than soccer. In any case, let’s solve these PIPS! Today’s Medium Pips was quite a tricky one!
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.
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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:
The main thing about today’s Hard Pips is that we have a lot of high-pip dominoes and a lot of small tiles and groups, so we need to get rid of some of these high Pip dominoes in = groups. Not all — we have an Orange > 9 double and a Pink 10 double — but we have to get rid of some. We’ll start by doing that.
Step 1
Begin at the “U” and place the 5/5 in the center of Pink = and the 5/3 domino from Pink = up into Green =. The 6/3 domino goes from Orange > 4 into Green = and the 6/2 domino goes from Blue > 4 into Dark Blue 2. Place the 0/5 domino from Dark Blue 2 into Pink =.
Step 2
Move to the “F” and place the 5/6 domino in Orange > 9 and the 4/4 domino in Blue 8. The 5/2 domino goes from Pink 5 up into Purple 2 and the 0/0 domino finishes off Purple 2.
Solution
Last, we move to the “T” and start by placing the 2/0 domino from Purple 2 into Green 2 and the 3/0 domino from Dark Blue > 2 into Green 2. The 2/4 domino goes from Green 2 down into Pink 10 and the 6/1 domino goes from Pink 10 into Purple =. Wrap up this Pips with the 1/2 domino from Purple = into Blue 2.
The Medium Pips gave me a harder time than the Hard Pips today.
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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