NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Sunday, August 2

How To Play Pips

In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored 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 number 350, because today is the 350th Pips puzzle since this game kicked off at the NYT Games App. It’s a tough one to commemorate this big day, so I just sort of winged it and, naturally, had to make a bunch of changes as I went along. I’ll give you the right way to go about it from step 1.

Step 1

Place the 4/1 domino from Blue < 5 into Orange = and the 1/2 domino from Orange = up into Dark Blue =. The 1/1 domino goes in the remaining Orange = tiles and the 6/2 domino goes from Blue > 5 into Dark Blue =.

Step 2

Toss the 2/5 domino from Dark Blue = up into Blue 5 and then hop over to the right side of the “350”. Place the 3/5 domino from Dark Blue 3 into Green 5 and the 6/4 domino from Orange = into Purple > 3. The 6/3 domino goes from Orange = up into Green 3.

Step 3

We’re saving all the free tiles for the fourth step so bear with me. Place the 0/1 domino from Purple 0 into Pink = and the 1/3 domino from Pink = into Green 3. Then place the 0/5 domino from Dark Blue < 3 up into Purple 5. Hop over to the top of the “5” and place the 0/0 domino from Orange 0 into Purple < 3.

Solution

Moving left to right: Place the 3/3 domino from the first free tile into Pink 3 and the 1/6 domino from Purple < 3 into the second free tile. The 2/3 domino goes from Dark Blue = into the third free tile and the 0/2 domino finishes up this monster of a Hard Pips from Pink 0 into the fourth free tile.

Have a great lazy Sunday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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