Lazy Sunday is upon us but before we can just chill out and watch all the new shows and movies out this fine October weekend (you can check out my full streaming guide here) we have some puzzles to solve. Specifically, we have dominoes to lay down and colorful tiles to fill. Let’s solve this Pips!
Looking for Saturday’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:
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. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.
NYT Pips Today: Hints and Answers for Saturday, October 4
Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Difficult puzzle. Spoilers ahead.
Easy
Medium
Difficult
Let’s do a complete walkthrough of today’s Difficult Pips. It starts out like this:
This rectangular object looks a bit like a courtyard. There are entryways on both sides, a little patio and a walkway and a central area that’s likely a fountain or garden or somesuch. There’s no real obvious starting point, so I just dove into this one based on the best assumptions I could make.
Step 1
The Purple = group is probably the best place to look for an early clue. We could fill it with 3’s or with 4’s from today’s selection of dominoes, but with an Orange 8 and a Purple 8 group, my thinking was we’d likely need the 4’s for those. We also have several > and < groups/tiles. I decided to start with the Dark Blue >2 tile.
Now, I placed the wrong domino here initially (the 3/4 domino) but it was easy to swap that out in the end. Everything else I did working my way around the courtyard was correct (miraculously) so just one swap at the end finished the puzzle. The correct domino to place here is the 5/4 domino, from Dark Blue >2 into Orange 8.
Next, place the 4/4 domino from Orange 8 into Purple 8 and the 0/4 domino into the remaining Purple 8 tiles, like so:
Step 2
Based on the Pink 9 group, I assumed we would need smaller numbers ahead, so I placed the 5/2 domino from Green <6 into Blue <7 and the 6/3 domino from the free tile into Blue <7. Then I slotted the 3/3 domino into the left side of the Purple = group, like so:
Solution
Next, the 3/2 domino goes from Purple = into Pink 9 and the 3/5 domino goes from Purple = into the final free tile. Finally, the 3/4 domino fills in the remaining Pink 9 tiles, and that’s a wrap!
On a certain level, I brute-forced this Pips. I figured even though I wasn’t 100% certain about these, I’d lay them as I went and adjust later. Fortunately, I only had to do that once. On the other hand, I did operate with a clear sense of how the Purple = block should look, I just didn’t start there since I wasn’t at all sure where each 3 pip would go. How did you do?
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