Another day, another NYT Pips to solve. Time keeps flying. It’s already the last Thursday of May, with just one short weekend before June. Grab your dominoes, Pipsqueaks, we have some Pips to solve!
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:
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 word SIX and, surprisingly, doesn’t actually have that many 6’s on the board. Only two tiles require a 6 and there’s a two-tile 6 group. There are, however, quite a few 6’s in our domino stash, which means we’ll need some of those for an = group. Let’s start at the top.
Step 1
Place the 6/3 domino from Pink 6 into Purple = and the 3/3 domino after that in the next two Purple = tiles. The 3/2 domino goes from Purple = into Pink > 1 and the 6/5 domino slots into Blue 6 down to Orange 6. Place the 1/0 domino from Orange 6 into Green = and the 0/0 domino in the remaining Green = tiles.
Step 2
With the “S” done, hope over to the “X” and place the 3/1 domino from Purple 3 into Dark Blue =. The 1/6 domino goes from Dark Blue = into Green = and the 1/1 domino finishes off Dark Blue =. Place the 6/6 domino in the next two Green = tiles.
Solution
The 6/4 domino goes from Green = into Dark Blue > 3 and the 6/0 domino goes from Green = into Orange < 3. Place the 6/2, 4/1 and 3/0 dominoes in any order in the “I” Blue ≠ group and you’re done!
I had to mess around with the bottom of the “S” a couple times to make this work. I’d originally had 6/2 from Blue 6 into Orange 6 and then 4/1 from Orange 6 into Green = but while all that worked, I had one too many 1’s leftover for Blue ≠ and had to go back and fix it, which took a bit of trial and error. I got there eventually!
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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