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
Is it Thursday already? Time flies fast whether or not you’re having fun, it turns out. We have a whole bunch of dominoes to fit into colorful tile grids, so let’s get right to it.
Looking for Wednesday’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.
Here’s an example of a difficult tier Pips:
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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:
As I suspected yesterday, we’re going through “do re mi fa so la ti” in our Hard Pips series. We’ve had RE and TI and LA and today we have MI. Let’s begin!
Step 1
Start with the 5/0 from Pink > 4 into Dark Blue < 3 since I’m pretty sure this is the only domino that can go here (since we’ll need the 6/0 later). Next, place the 1/1 domino in the two left Purple = tiles and the 1/4 domino down from Purple = into Blue =. The 4/4 domino goes into the next two vertical Blue = slots and the 4/2 domino goes from Blue = up into Dark Blue <3.
Step 2
Next, place the 0/2 domino in Dark Blue < 3 on the left and the 1/0 domino from Pink 1 into Green 2 on the right of the “M.” The 2/3 domino goes from Green 2 up into Pink = and the 3/3 domino finishes up the remaining Pink = tiles. Hop over to the “I” and plop the 6/0 from Purple 6 into Orange =.
Solution
Place the 3/1 from Blue = into Orange < 3 and the 3/5 domino from Blue = into Green > 3. The 3/0 domino goes from Blue = into Orange = and the 0/0 domino fits in the bottom two Orange = tiles. The 4/0 domino finishes things off from the only free tile into the remaining Orange = tile.
Have a great Thursday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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