NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Friday, June 19

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. 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 a poodle. Fancy, hoity toity dog. I have nothing against poodles, but they are kind of funny looking (no offense to any poodles or poodle owners out there — I love pugs and they’re hilarious looking). In any case, the first clue is the blanks. We have two 0 tiles and two dominoes with blanks, so we know those have to go in one or the other. If we use the 0/5 in the poodle’s snout, we’ll have too few 5’s left to finish the puzzle, so that’s where we’ll begin.

Step 1

Place the 0/4 domino from Blue 0 into Orange = and the 0/5 domino from Blue 0 into Purple 9 in the poodle’s hind leg. The 4/6 domino goes from Purple 9 into Blue = and the 6/1 domino goes from Blue = into Purple =. Place the 1/5 domino from Purple = into Pink 5.

Step 2

Next, place the 2/2 domino in the two rightmost tiles of Green = and the 2/1 domino from Green = into Dark Blue =. The 4/1 domino goes from Orange = down into Dark Blue = and the 1/3 domino goes from Dark Blue = down into Blue 9. The 2/3 domino finishes this step off from Blue 9 into Orange 3.

Solution

Place the 4/5 domino from Blue 9 into Green > 9 and the 6/2 domino from Green > 9 into Pink 2. The 5/5 domino fills in the Purple > 9 tiles and the 6/3 fills up Pink 9 and today’s Hard Pips!

There was definitely some trial and error today, but realizing that I would run out of 5’s if I placed the 0/5 in the other position set me on the right track.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Be sure to follow me for all your daily puzzle-solving guides, TV show and movie reviews and more here on this blog!