How To Solve Today’s NYT Pips Puzzles, Wednesday August 19

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:

Today’s Hard Pips is “L” as in “Logic” and little “l” as in “little.” The trick here is the “l” which is a ≠ group totally detached from any other groups. Often I point out that doubles are handy with ≠ groups because you can almost always place them around the perimeter of one, half in the ≠ group and half outside. That isn’t an option today, and we have two doubles to contend with — don’t get all the way to the end with a 3/3 or a 6/6 that can’t fit in Dark Blue ≠.

It’s obvious based on numbers that:

• We will have 6’s in the Purple = group.
• There are only two blanks and they will both need to go into Dark Blue < 2.
• We should save the little “l” for last.

With all that in mind, we have a clear place to begin . . . .

Step 1

Place the 5/3 domino from Orange > 3 down into Dark Blue < 2 and the 3/0 domino from Blue 7 into Dark Blue < 0. Since we know the 6’s are going in Purple =, place the 1/6 domino from Dark Blue < 2 into Purple = and the 4/6 domino from Blue 7 into Purple =.

Step 2

This next section I had to fiddle with extensively, but the reality is we need at least two 5’s for the Purple 10 at the top. Yes, we could do it with a 4 and a 6 but that means we have no 6’s for Dark Blue ≠ and since we have no blanks left, we need our last 6 for that (since we need 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6).

Place the 3/3 domino in Pink = and the 6/6 domino right next to that in Purple =. The 4/2 domino goes from Green > 3 up into Orange < 3 and the 6/3 domino goes from Purple = up into Blue =. We are now within striking distance, folks.

Solution

The 5/4 domino goes from Purple 10 into Pink > 3 and the 5/3 domino goes from Purple 10 into Blue =. We now have the 1/4, 2/3 and 5/6 domino and they can go into Dark Blue ≠ in any order you please.

Have a wicked Wednesday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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