NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Saturday, May 30

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 FIVE and there are lots and lots of 5’s on the grid. Some individual tiles, some > or < and some multi-tile groups. The only other condition is =. The best place to start is the “V” since we know Pink > 5 has to be a 6 and we know it has to pair with something that can also pair with a double. The only domino that fulfils that requirement is the 6/2. Let’s begin.

Step 1

Place the 6/2 domino from Pink > 5 into Blue = and the 2/2 domino in the remaining Blue = tiles. The 5/4 domino goes from Dark Blue 5 up into the second Blue = group and the 4/1 domino goes from Blue = up into Orange =. Finish this step off with the 1/1 domino in the remaining Orange = tiles.

Step 2

Hop over to the “E” and place the 5/1 domino from Purple 5 into Green 5 and the 4/6 domino from Green 5 into Orange > 5. The 6/3 domino goes from Green > 5 into Purple < 5 and the 5/5 domino goes from Dark Blue 5 into Purple 5. Finish this step off with the 3/2 domino in Pink 5.

Solution

Moving to the “F” place the 5/0 domino from Pink 5 into Purple = and the 0/0 domino in the remaining Purple = tiles. The 5/2 domino goes from Green 5 up into Dark Blue 5 and the 2/1 domino fills in the remaining two Dark Blue 5 tiles. Finally, place the 5/3 domino from the Blue 5 tile down into Orange = in the “I” and place the 3/0 domino from Orange = into the one and only free tile.

The really tricky thing about today’s Hard Pips is that even though we know where the 2’s go, the other side of the “V” could have been 0’s in the Orange = group just as easily. The only problem is that if you go that route, you’ll end up at the “I” without two matching pips for Orange =. This happened to me and I had to move a bunch of stuff around. So it goes . . . .

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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