Looking for help with today’s NYT Pips puzzles? You’ve come to the right place. Not only will you find strategies below, but full answers for each daily trio of Pips puzzles and a full walkthrough for the Hard Pips.
Is it Thursday already? My how time flies when you’re playing puzzle games. Today we have three Pips puzzles to solve, and both the Medium and Hard are fairly challenging. Line your pockets with dominoes, folks, and let’s get to it!
Looking for Wednesday’s Pips? Read our guide right here.
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.
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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 letter “J” and its little buddy version, “j” and we’re going to start with big “J” because it’s where we can (and must) deplete our rather large supply of 6’s and other large Pips. We have three 15 groups in the big “J” and that’s a bit irksome and I had to do some trial and error to make it work, but this is the best way I found.
Step 1
Place the 4/6 domino from Purple > 4 into Pink 15 and the 2/4 domino from Blue < 3 into Pink 15. The 5/2 goes between these down into Orange < 3 and the 0/6 goes from Orange < 3 down into Dark Blue =. Finally, place the 6/1 domino from Dark Blue = into Pink < 3.
Step 2
Pop the 6/6 domino into Blue 15 and the 3/1 domino from Blue 15 over into Pink < 3. The 3/6 domino goes from Purple 3 into Green 15 and the 5/4 domino goes above that.
Solution
Move to the little “j” and place the 0/3 in the left tiles of Orange 5 and the 2/2 domino from Orange 5 into Blue 5. The 3/5 domino goes from Blue 5 into Dark Blue 5 and the 3/2 domino fills up the the Purple 5 tiles. Pop the 0/0 domino into the two free tiles and you’re done!
Have a therapeutic Thursday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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