Today's Pips

Credit: NYT

Happy Lazy Sunday, Pipsqueaks! And happy Mother’s Day! If you’re feeling extra lazy, be sure to check out my weekend streaming guide for all the best new movies and TV shows out this weekend (including some theatrical releases). But before you veg out on the couch, let’s solve today’s Easy, Medium and Hard Pips.

ForbesWhat To Watch This Weekend: New Shows And Movies To Stream On Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV And MoreBy Erik Kain

Looking for Friday’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 for Ma. Not Mom, not Mother, not Mommy, not Mum or Mummy but Ma. Which is funny because when I hear “Ma” I think “Ma and Pa” and that’s always two pretty old people who’ve been married so long they refer to one another that way, their given names long forgotten. Well, it’s fitting for Mother’s Day, but it’s also a super challenging Hard Pips. The tips of the “M” really threw me off today, thwarting my plans. I had to move my dominoes around a lot, and made a couple bad assumptions that came back to bite me. Let’s begin.

Step 1

I’m not sure this is the best place to start, to be honest, but I started at the “A” with the 4/2 domino from Blue > 3 into Dark Blue < 3. The 0/0 domino goes above that in Green 0 and the 0/1 domino goes from Green 0 into Purple < 2. Place the 3/3 domino in Pink 6 and the 4/5 domino in Orange 9.

Step 2

Slide back over to the “M” and place the 5/6 domino from Purple 5 down into Blue 10. The 4/4 domino goes next to that, from Blue 10 down into Dark Blue 4. Next, place the 1/1 domino from Orange < 2 into Purple 2 and the 1/3 domino from Purple 2 into Pink > 2. Place the 1/5 domino from Green = into Pink > 5.

Solution

Place the 0/4 domino from Pink < 2 into Dark Blue > 2 and the 4/1 domino next to that from Orange > 3 down into Green =. The 2/2 domino goes in the bottom two Blue = tiles and the 2/1 goes from Blue = into the final Green = tile. Finally, jump back over to the “A” and place the 6/6 domino in Green = and you’re done!

Was this as challenging for you as it was for me? This really stumped me, though I got it in the end. I guess you really don’t want to mess with Ma.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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