Today's Pips

Credit: NYT

TGIF! Friday is here, Pipsqueaks, and with it another trio of Easy, Medium and Hard Pips puzzles to solve from the NYT Games app. Grab some dominoes and let’s knock these out before the weekend!

Looking for Thursday’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 three Pips puzzles are odd. The first looks like a happy face, kind of, and the second is the word “IF”. The third appears to be the name IAN. So “smile if Ian” or something? I feel like I’m missing the joke. In any case, this is a bit of a tricky one to get started, so let’s dive right in.

Step 1

The trick today is realizing two things: First, you’ll need those 4’s so don’t go spending them in = groups. Second, only three dominoes can go in Blue < 3 so make sure you have one left by the time you get there.

Begin in the “A” sector and place the 5/6 domino from Blue > 4 down into Dark Blue = and the 6/6 domino in the remaining Dark Blue = tiles. The 4/3 domino goes from Purple 4 into Pink 3 and the 0/0 domino fills in the rest of the Pink 3 tiles. Finally, place the 4/2 domino from Purple 4 into Green < 3.

Step 2

Finish off the “A” with the 6/3 domino from Orange > 4 into Blue 3. Hop down to the “N” and place the 0/1 domino in Blue < 3. The 1/5 domino goes from Green < 4 into Dark Blue > 4 and the 0/2 domino goes from Orange < 3 up into Green =. Finish this step with the 2/2 domino in the remaining Green = tiles.

Solution

Place the 5/4 domino from Dark Blue = down into Purple 4 and the 5/3 domino from Dark Blue = into Pink 3. Then move to the “I” and place the 3/3 domino from Pink 3 into the first free tile and the 4/4 domino from Orange 4 into the second free tile. And that’s that!

I definitely caused myself a bit of grief by not realizing the 4’s had to be rationed so carefully at first and tried to use them in Dark Blue = which quickly proved a mistake. But once that was cleared up and I used the 5/6 domino from Blue > 4 into Dark Blue = instead of the 5/4 domino in the other direction, this all came together pretty nicely.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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