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 letter “Y” or, perhaps, “V” or maybe it’s a goblet. Whatever it is, there’s not a super obvious starting point, but I do like the Orange 12 since we know it requires a couple of our 6’s. We also know it can’t be the 6/6 domino since Purple = requires a block of four of the same Pips. Using this, and the Dark Blue 5 group, we can figure out how to kick this Hard Pips off.

Step 1

Place the 6/1 domino from Orange 12 up into Purple = and the 6/2 domino from Orange 12 over into Dark Blue 5. The 3/1 domino goes from Dark Blue 5 into Purple = and the 1/1 domino fills in the remaining two Purple = tiles. Next, place the 4/4 domino in the bottom left tiles of Green =.

Step 2

Place the 2/5 domino from Pink 4 into Blue 5 and the 2/4 domino from Pink 4 into Green =. The 4/0 domino goes from Green = into the free tile and the 4/5 domino goes from Green = into Purple 10. Finish up this step with the 4/3 domino from Green = into Blue 6.

Solution

Place the 5/3 domino from Purple 10 into Blue 6 and the 0/0 domino in Pink =. Move down to the little goblet and place the 6/6 domino in Dark Blue > 8. The 6/3 domino goes from Purple 6 into Green 6 and the 3/0 domino goes from Green 6 up into Orange < 3. That’s a wrap!

As always, I’m reminded why I don’t like to start in the smaller of two grids. I tried it that way and completely botched what I’d need for up above. That’s how I settled on starting with Orange 12, since it made it pretty clear what that whole corner would be and everything else fell into place nicely after that.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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