Happy Memorial Day, Pipsqueaks! Just because it’s a holiday doesn’t mean we’re off the hook when it comes to today’s NYT Pips puzzles. Grab your dominos — and a beer and a hot dog — and let’s get right to it!
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.
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 the word DICE. Like dominos, dice have pips. A domino is basically two sides of a die laid out flat, after all. And you can’t roll them, though you can line them up and knock them down — which is what we’re about to do with this Hard Pips.
Step 1
The most obvious starting point is the “C” where we’ll lay the 1/4 domino from Orange 1 into Green = and the 4/4 above that in the remaining Green = tiles. We have two doubles left, the 1/1 and the 5/5 but we’ll need the 5/5 in a minute, so place the 1/1 in Orange =. The 5/3 domino goes in Orange 8 up in the “D” and the 3/6 domino goes from Pink 3 into Purple 11.
Step 2
Place the 5/4 domino from Purple 11 into Blue 4 and the 0/1 domino from Blue 4 into Green 11. The 5/5 domino finishes up Green 11 and the “D.” Move to the “E” and place the 6/0 domino from Green 6 into Dark Blue < 5 and the 4/3 domino from Dark Blue < 5 into Blue 3.
Solution
Place the 2/6 domino fro Purple 2 into Pink > 4 and the 1/2 domino from Dark Blue 1 into Pink =. The 2/4 domino finishes up the “E” from Pink = into Blue 4. Move the “I” and place the 5/0 domino from Purple > 3 into Dark Blue 1 and the 1/3 domino above that, from Dark Blue 1 into the one and only free tile. That’s all folks!
A reasonably tricky Hard Pips today, but we got ‘er done. Have a great Memorial Day!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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