Looking for help with today’s Easy, Medium and Hard NYT Pips puzzles? Whether you’re after a nudge in the right direction or just want to compare notes, below you’ll find everything you need to solve each of today’s Pips plus a full walkthrough for today’s
Monday, Monday. Here we go again. We’re in the third act of July now, though we still have one more Monday after this, and plenty of time to enjoy this rainy, summery month. Grab your dominoes, Pipsqueaks, and let’s get puzzling.
Looking for Sunday’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.
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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:
Today’s Hard Pips is a penguin. Or perhaps a puffin. I’m going with penguin, however, and not the Batman villain. The cute aquatic bird. There’s not an obvious starting point, but we do have lots and lots of 6’s in our domino stash, so I’m going with 6’s for for the Dark Blue center, and 1’s for Green =. That should get us started.
Step 1
Place the 6/0 domino from Dark Blue = up into Orange = and the 0/0 domino in the remaining Orange = tiles. The 6/1 domino goes from Dark Blue = into Green = and the 1/0 domino from Green = into Blue 0.
Step 2
Place the 6/5 domino from Dark Blue = into Pink > 3 and the 6/3 domino from Dark Blue = into Purple =. The 3/3 domino fills up the remaining Purple = tiles and the 1/1 domino fills in the remaining Green = tiles.
Step 3
Place the 1/5 domino from Blue 1 up into Purple = and the 5/2 domino from Purple = into Pink =. The 2/2 domino fills in the remaining Pink = tiles and the 6/4 domino goes into Purple 10 (since we’ll need the 5/5 domino elsewhere).
Solution
Place the 4/4 domino in Orange 8 and the 5/5 domino in Blue =. The 6/6 domino goes in the two right-most Pink = tiles and the 6/2 domino goes from Pink = down into Orange 2. And that’s a wrap!
Happy Monday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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