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
It’s Saturday and there’s a million things to be done, but before I can get to those tasks, we have dominoes to place in colorful tiles. Let’s get right to it!
Looking for Friday’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:
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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:
Another tower-grid style Hard Pips and, as is usually the case, the trick is the fact that we have no doubles in our domino stash, so finding tiles with the same number next to one another can clue us in on what to place where. We’ll start in the top left corner, where exactly this scenario occurs.
Step 1
Place the 1/2 domino from Purple 1 into Pink 2 and the 3/2 domino from Green 3 into Pink 2 on the right side. Both these are adjacent to other 1’s and 3’s. The 3/5 domino goes above that from Blue 3 into Orange 5 and the 1/5 domino goes below that, from Purple 1 into Green 5. The 1/4 domino goes from Dark Blue 1 down into Blue 4 with the 4/3 domino next to that from Orange 4 into Dark Blue 3.
Step 2
Next, place the 4/0 domino in the bottom left corner from Blue 4 into Orange 0. Then move up to the right-middle and place the 3/0 from Blue 3 down into Purple 0. The 5/0 goes from Pink 5 down into Green 0 and the 5/2 goes next to that from Purple 5 down into Dark Blue 2. Our last 5 domino, 5/4, goes from Orange 5 down into Purple 4.
Solution
We only have one 4 left and we need it so place the 6/3 domino from Pink > 3 into the first free tile. The 2/0 goes below that from Dark Blue 2 into Green 0. Next, place the 4/2 domino from Dark Blue 4 into Pink 2 and the 0/1 domino from Green 0 into Blue 1. Finally, the 3/1 domino goes from Orange 3 up into the second free tile and we’re done!
Have a wonderful Saturday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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