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.
Another Sunday, another Pips puzzle to solve. I’m still on my vacation to the great northern wilds of Canada. The legendary city of Vancouver, BC. It’s really quite lovely, though I worry about home, which is dry and windy with nearby wildfires raging. If I had a magic wand — and a magic bucket — I’d fill it with seawater and drop it on the fire. That would be a neat trick. Lacking these arcane accoutrements, I will instead play today’s Pips.
Looking for Saturday’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 equation “14 – 7 = 7” and is comprised of seven separate little grids, which makes it appear more daunting than it actually is in play. We have several doubles, and we’ll need one specifically for Orange = while the rest will simply go toward totals. Notably, there are no free tiles in today’s Hard Pips.
Step 1
Start with the 3/5 from Dark Blue 3 into Green 17 followed by the 6/6 domino in the remaining Green 17 tiles. The 0/4 domino goes from Pink < 3 into Dark Blue 14 and the 5/5 domino fills up the rest of Dark Blue 14. The 5/0 domino goes from Blue 5 down into Green 1 and the 1/2 domino goes from Green 1 into Blue < 4.
Step 2
Place the 6/3 domino from Purple 6 down into Orange 6 and the 3/1 domino from Orange 6 down into Pink 1. The 2/2 domino goes in the top tiles of Orange = and the 2/6 goes from Orange = down into Blue 14.
Solution
Place the 4/2 domino from Purple > 3 into Pink 2 and the 0/2 domino from Orange < 2 into Dark Blue 2. The 5/6 domino goes in Purple ≠ and finish things up with the 3/3 domino in Purple 6.
Have a lovely (and hopefully very lazy) Sunday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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