Looking for help with today’s NYT Pips puzzles? You’ve come to the right place. Not only will you find strategies below, but full answers for each daily trio of Pips puzzles and a full walkthrough for the Hard Pips.
Monday is back and I’m ready to rock and roll, or pips and poll, or something. I’m not sure. I have so much to do and so little time to do it and it doesn’t seem to matter that I don’t sleep enough, there’s still just never enough hours in the day! So grab your dominoes and let’s get to it!
Looking for Sunday’s Pips? Read our guide right here.
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.
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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:
I suppose there is no great or perfect place to start today’s Pips so I went with the 6’s and that Purple 12 in the middle. If the 5/6 domino were to feed into that Purple 12, we’d only have the 6/6 left to satisfy Green > 10 and that would be a great way to take out some high pips dominos. So that’s what I did, and this is how we’ll begin.
Step 1
Place the 6/6 domino in Green > 10 and the move to the middle of the grid and place the 5/6 domino from Blue 5 into Purple 12. The 6/1 domino goes from Purple 12 into Pink Pink 1 and the 5/0 domino goes above that, from Blue 10 into Pink 1. The 2/0 domino goes from Purple 4 into Pink 1.
Step 2
Next, place the 2/5 domino from Purple 4 down into Green 9 and the 4/4 domino fro Green 9 down into Dark Blue 7. The 3/1 domino goes from Dark Blue 7 down into Pink 1. Hop over to the Blue 1 tile and place the 1/4 domino from that into Orange 10 and the 6/0 domino from Orange 10 up into Purple 0.
Solution
Go back to the top of the grid and place the 5/4 domino from Blue 10 into Orange 6 and the 2/3 domino from Orange 6 down into Dark Blue =. The 3/3 domino goes in the next two Blue = tiles and the 0/1 domino goes from Pink 0 down into Orange 3. Finish Orange 3 with the 1/1 domino and you’re done.
Have a lovely Monday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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