Today's Pips

Credit: NYT

Another Monday, another trio of Pips puzzles to solve. The Easy is definitely very easy today, but I found both the Medium and the Hard to be pretty solid challenges. Read on for the solutions, plus a complete walkthrough for today’s Hard Pips.

Looking for Sunday’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 tricky because we have three different pips that will work in Purple =, Orange = and Dark Blue =, all of which require a double and all of which can pretty much go in any of these spots, except that we won’t have the six different pips we’ll need for Green ≠ if don’t do it right. Let’s begin.

Step 1

I decided the best thing to do would be to get the 6’s out of the way, since they can’t go in any group that needs a double. Place the 6/2 domino from Pink = into Blue 2. The 6/1 domino goes above that from Pink = into Purple 3. Next place the 6/3 domino from the top right free tile into Purple =. This leaves us with a 6/0 domino, which I’ll plop over in Green ≠.

Step 2

Next, place the 2/1 domino from Blue 2 into Pink 2 and the 3/1 domino from Purple = into Pink 2. The 3/3 domino goes in the two left tiles of Purple = and the 3/4 domino goes from Purple = down into Orange =.

Step 3

Place the 4/5 domino from Orange = down into Dark Blue = and the 4/4 domino in the next two Orange = tiles. The 4/1 domino goes from Orange = over into Purple 3. We’re out of 4’s now so place the 4/2 domino anywhere you please in the Green ≠ group.

Solution

Finally, place the 5/1 domino from Dark Blue 5 into Purple 3 and the 5/5 domino in the last Dark Blue = tiles. This leaves us with the 5/3 domino which we’ll slot into Green ≠ and call it a day.

Starting with 6’s helped me fix my biggest mistake, which was trying to make 5’s and 4’s work in Purple =. This made it clear that 6/3 had to go up top into Purple = and from here it was pretty easy to figure out.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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