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 Hard Pips.
It’s Saturday and that’s important for two reasons. June 20 is the last day of spring, with the Summer Solstice landing tomorrow and summer officially kicking off. Tomorrow is also the longest day of the year, but today is the best day of the year for one simple reason: It is your humble Pips guide’s birthday. Happy birthday to me! Gather some dominoes and grab some cake and let’s solve this Pips!
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.
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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 the super challenging mathematical equation “5 – 1 = 4.” See, you’ve already learned something new! In any case, we can identify a pretty good place to start down in the “4.” It’s the lack of 5’s that tips us off. We have but one 5 and we’ll need that for Dark Blue 11 in the “5.” We need to fulfill the Orange > 10 in the “4” so we’ll need to have two 6’s in there and the only way to do that is to start with the 6/6 from Green > 4 into Orange > 10. We also only have one double, which also comes to pay in the “4.”
Step 1
As noted, begin with the 6/6 domino from Green > 4 down into Orange > 10 and follow that with the 6/1 domino from Orange > 10 into Dark Blue 1. Place the 3/3 domino in the top tiles of Purple =. With the 6/1 domino gone, the only domino that works in Green 7 is the 5/2 domino, so place that there. With the 6/6 domino gone, there’s only one domino left that can work in Green > 9, so place the 4/6 domino there.
Step 2
Move to the “5” and place the 2/6 domino from Orange < 3 into Dark Blue 10 and the 4/1 domino from Dark Blue 10 into Pink 5. The 4/5 domino goes from Pink 5 into Dark Blue 11 and the 6/0 domino goes from Dark Blue 11 into Blue 1. Finish this step off with the 1/3 domino from Blue 1 into Purple =.
Solution
The 3/2 domino finishes up the “5” from Purple = into Pink < 3. Hop over to the “1” and place the 4/0 domino from Orange > 3 into Purple 1 and the 1/2 domino from Purple 1 into Blue < 3. Place the 3/0 domino from Pink > 2 into Blue < 2 and then hop to the “4” and place the 6/3 domino from the one and only free tile into Purple =. That’s a wrap!
Have a fantastic Saturday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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