How To Solve Today’s NYT Pips Puzzles, Saturday August 22

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:

A Q and a small “q” are today’s Hard Pips shapes, and that’s funny because in the Modern Warfare 4 beta there’s a queue to get into the lobbies right now. Q is for queue and all that jazz.

Today’s Hard Pips is best solved by looking first at the big groups — Blue 16 and Green 12 and Pink 10 — because at least we know we have to use most of our 6’s. We know for sure that we need the 4/6 domino in Blue 16 because we need two of the tiles to equal at least 10 and we don’t have anything higher (like a 5/6 or a 6/6). Let’s begin!

Step 1

Start with the 4/6 domino in Blue 16’s bottom two tiles and then place the 1/1 domino below that. We don’t have a 0/0 or a 0/2 so the only way to make 2 out of three tiles is a 1/1 domino and a 0/X domino. We d0n’t really know what should go next to either of these, so let’s move over to the small “q” next. This part does require some trial and error but we at least know that two 6’s have to go in Green 12. Place the 6/2 domino from Green 12 into Dark Blue 5 and the 6/3 domino from Green 12 into Orange 8. Next, place the 3/4 domino from Dark Blue 5 inot Pink 10.

Step 2

Place the 6/0 domino from Pink 10 into Dark Blue 1 and the 1/5 domino from Dark Blue 1 into Orange 8. At this point, we still have two dominoes that could work in Purple 4 so move back to the big “Q” and place the 6/1 domino from Blue 16 into Pink 5. The 4/5 domino goes from Pink 5 into Purple = and the 5/0 domino goes from Purple = down into Orange 2.

Solution

Place the 2/4 domino from Orange 2 down into Blue 4 and the 4/4 domino next to that. Place the 2/2 domino in Green = which leaves the 0/4 domino for Purple 4 in the small “q.” All we have left now is the 0/3 domino from Purple 2 over into the one and only and final free tile. Voila! Presto!

Have a swell Saturday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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