NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Tuesday, July 7

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:

This is probably the hardest Hard Pips I’ve played in a very long time, much harder than yesterday’s similar “tower grid.” This one has two = groups, however, and one free tile and two 7 pairs. Lots of variables make it easy to get lost and find yourself stuck. A few things to consider:

It’s smart to count your pips today. In this batch there are a few spares, and counting reveals that 2’s are the only pips that will work in Green =’s three-tile spread. A few different things could work in Dark Blue = unfortunately, so that’s a bit trickier. We can be pretty certain that the 6 is going in one of the two 7 pairs also, but it’s not immediately clear which one.

Fortunately, we have three dominoes that we can lay down right away because they can only go in these tiles and these tiles only. We’ll start there.

Step 1

Since we have no doubles, this is how you find your starters. Place the 0/5 from Purple 0 down into Dark Blue 5 and the 3/5 from Pink 3 into Blue 3. Move to the bottom corner and place the 1/3 from Dark Blue 1 down into Pink 3 (since we have no 3/5 domino anymore).

Step 2

Next, place the 5/1 domino from Purple 5 into Orange 1 and the 2/5 domino from Green = up into Dark Blue =. The 4/5 domino goes from Purple 4 into Dark Blue =. Move up the board and place the 3/6 domino from Orange 3 into Green 7 and the 1/0 domino from Green 7 into Pink 0.

Step 3

Next, place the 2/0 domino from Blue 2 into Orange 0 and the 4/0 domino from Purple 4 into Dark Blue 0. The 3/4 domino goes from Blue 3 into Pink 4 and the 2/1 domino goes from Purple 2 down into Orange 1.

Solution

Move to the bottom left and place the 1/4 domino from Green 1 over into Blue 7 and the 3/2 domino from Blue 7 into Green =. The 4/2 domiono goes next to that, from Pink 4 up into Green = and the 3/0 goes from Green 3 down into the one and only free tile. Not so bad right?

I tried this a few different ways and then really spent the time needed to count every pips and compare numbers against the tiles (after I’d placed the three dominoes I knew had to go in those spots). It wasn’t until I placed 5’s in Dark Blue = that I finally had my lucky break. What a challenge!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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