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 brought to you by the letter “T” as in “Thanks!” and “Torpedo” and also Tuesday and Thursday, neither of which is today. Where’s the W? Where’s the big W?

In any case, this is a pretty straightforward Pips, though not exactly easy. We know we need all of our 6’s in Blue 23 and one of our 5’s. We have lots of 5’s. So many that it might be tempting to slot them into Purple = but we actually need them in Green = and we don’t have enough for both. We can fit them in some other, smaller = group, however. Alright, let’s get on with it.

Step 1

Place the 5/6 domino from Green = up into Blue 23 and the 6/6 domino above that in Blue 23. We can’t do the 5/3 domino from Blue 23 into Orange < 5 because then we’d need the 6/6 at the top of Blue 23 and that would mean we’d need to fill Pink 4 with one domino and that would mean we’d need two doubles to make Purple = work, which is impossible.

Step 2

Next, place the 0/5 domino from Orange < 5 down into Green = and the 5/1 domino directly below that into Pink 7. Next, place the 4/5 domino from Purple = down into Dark Blue = and the 5/5 domino in the remaining Dark Blue = tiles. The 4/0 domino goes from Purple = into the first free tile.

Solution

Place the 2/2 domino in Pink 7 on the right and the 2/3 domino from the remaining Pink 7 tile into Blue =. The 3/1 domino goes from Blue = over into Purple 4 and we can wrap this up with the 3/0 domino from Purple = up into the second free tile.

I definitely had to move a few things around as I sorted this one out, but it didn’t completely boggle my mind.

How’d you do on today’s Pips? Let me know!

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