Well, it’s Thursday already and we’re down to the dregs when it comes to January. Just a couple more days before the last full month of winter. That’s fine by me. This has been a pretty mild winter, but I’m still ready for warmer weather. We have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips to solve, and they’re all pretty challenging today, especially Medium and Hard. Let’s dive right in!
Looking for Wednesday’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:
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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 marches one by one, hurrah, hurrah! The grid forms the word ANT and now I’ll have The ants go marching one by one, hurrah! hurrah! stuck in my head. And they all went marching down…into the ground…to get out…of the rain… This is a tough one, but I decided to start with the “T” since it has no free tiles.
Step 1
Begin with the 5/0 domino from the Orange 5 tile into Dark Blue = and the 5/4 domino from the Purple 5 tile into Green =. The 4/0 domino goes from Green = into Dark Blue = and the 0/0 domino finishes up the “T.”
Step 2
Next, place the 1/5 domino from the Blue 1 tile into Dark Blue 10 and the 6/2 domino from Dark Blue 10 into Blue =. The 2/2 domino slots in vertically in the next two Blue = tiles and the 2/1 domino goes from Blue = down into Green =.
Step 3
Place the 1/1 domino in the bottom two Green = tiles and the 1/0 domino from Green = into the first free tile. That’s all for the “N” but we still need to place the 3/5 domino from the Pink 3 tile into Orange = over in the “A” and the 2/3 domino from the free tile up into the Purple 3 tile.
Solution
Place the 5/6 domino from Orange = up into the third free tile and the 5/5 domino in the next two tiles of Orange =. The 3/4 domino goes from the second Pink 3 tile up into Purple = and the 4/4 domino delivers the final blow. Mischief managed, Thursday Pips complete.
I was going strong on today’s Hard Pips until I got to the “A” and tried to make the Orange = 4’s and the Purple = 5’s, which is totally backwards and left me scratching my head for a bit until I came up with the rather obvious solution. Sometimes I’m a little slow. Cut me some slack.
How’d you do on today’s Pips? Let me know!
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