NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Saturday, August 8

How To Play Pips

In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored 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:

The letter “I” and its diminutive little lower case lad, “i” — as in I think therefore I am” and “I think about ice cream and therefore am eating ice cream” are today’s Hard Pips. This was a lot of trial and error for me, and I found myself growing a little impatient with it, to be quite honest. I think that might just be external factors wriggling their way into my puzzling, but either way I got there in the end. Shall we?

Step 1

I started off with the little “i” figuring I could just swap stuff out later, but at least I’d have a domino or two out of the way. Then I had to just sort of go with my gut a bit, and this required me to change things a few times but each time I started with the 4/0 domino from Orange > 3 into Blue 0 and finally settled on the 0/6 domino from Blue 0 down into Purple = (one of two 6-tile = groups).

Step 2

Place the 6/5 domino from Purple > 3 over into Pink = and the 5/5 in the remaining two Pink = tiles. The 3/4 domino goes down from Dark Blue 3 into Green = and the 4/2 domino goes from Green = down int0 Blue =, the second of our two big 6-tile = groups.

Step 3

Place the 6/6 domino in the next two Purple = tiles and the 6/2 domino directly below that, into Blue =. The 4/6 domino goes from Pink 4 into Purple = and we’ll wrap up Purple = for good with the 6/1 domino from Purple = down into Green < 3.

Solution

Almost finished now, place the 2/2 domino in the middle left tiles of Blue = and the 02 domino from Purple < 3 into Blue =. The 2/5 domino goes from Blue = down into Pink 11 which leaves us with just the 3/3 domino to finish things off. Bravo, Pipsqueaks, we have vanquished the great and mighty “I”.

Have a super Saturday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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