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.
Grab your dominoes, Pipsqueaks, and let’s solve these Pips!
Looking for Tuesday’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:
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 kind of straightforward compared to a lot of these lately. One thing we know: We have five 6-pip dominoes and they all need to be used in Pink 18 and Green 12. There are two 5-tile = groups and two Pips that could work: 3’s and 5’s. The trick is identifying which one goes where. I decided 3’s would work best in Blue = and that’s where we’ll begin.
Step 1
Place the 6/3 domino from Green 12 into Blue = and the 3/3 domino in the next two Blue = tiles. The 3/2 domino goes from Blue = into Orange 4 and the 3/4 domino goes from Blue = into Green 9. The 2/5 domino goes from Orange 4 into Green 9.
Step 2
Next, place the 6/1 domino from Green 12 into Purple 3 then hop over to the top right corner and place the 0/0 domino in Blue < 2. The 6/6 domino goes next to that in Pink 18 and the 6/5 domino goes from Pink 18 down int Dark Blue =. Finish this step with the 5/5 domino directly below that In Dark Blue =.
Solution
Place the 1/5 domino from Purple 3 into Dark Blue = and the 1/2 domino from Purple 3 into Pink 2. The 4/5 domino goes from Orange 4 into Dark Blue = and the 4/2 domino goes from the one and only free tile into the Purple 2 tile. And that’s all she wrote!
Have a splendid Wednesday, Pipsqueaks!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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