NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Wednesday, July 22

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 a chickadee. Just a wee bird, hopping around in the leaves looking for bugs to munch on. The only very obvious place to start is in the beak. So we’ll start there, naturally. There was a lot of trial and error for me today, but I’ll guide you straight and true. (And the Medium Pips was a bit of a head-scratcher as well!) In fact, we know that our three 6’s must go in Green 12 and Blue 11, so that helps guide us a bit as we move from beak to tail.

Step 1

Place the 6/6 domino in Green 12 and the 5/3 domino above that, from Pink 5 into Purple =. The 3/4 domino goes from Purple = down into Orange = and the 1/4 domino goes from Dark Blue 1 down into Orange =.

Step 2

Next, place the 2/3 domino from Purple 2 down into Green 13 and the 5/5 in the remaining Green 13 tiles. The 4/0 domino goes from Orange = into Dark Blue 0 and the 2/0 goes from Blue 3 into Dark Blue =.

Step 3

Place the 1/3 domino from Blue 3 into Orange = and the 3/0 from Orange = into Dark Blue 0. The 4/2 goes from Purple = into Pink 2 in the bird’s tailfeathers, and the 4/5 goes directly below that from Purple = into Blue 11.

Solution

The 6/2 goes from Blue 11 into Purple = and the 2/1 goes from Purple = into Pink 1. Next, the 0/5 goes from Blue 0 down into Orange > 4 and the 3/3 finishes this Hard Pips up in Dark Blue =.

I hope you have a lovely Wednesday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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