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 quite a lot easier and more straightforward than most of the ones we’ve had recently. Since the top right has a Pink 15, we can surmise that it will require three 5’s and since we have no double 5’s, we know that Purple 6 will need to feed into it. We also know that we can’t use 3’s in Purple 6 since there aren’t two 3/5 dominoes and because we’ll need 3’s for Dark Blue =. With all that in mind, we have a very clear place to start.

Step 1

Place the 4/5 domino and the 2/5 domino from Purple 6 down into Pink 15, then place the 5/3 domino from Pink 15 into Dark Blue =. The 6/3 domino goes from Green 6 down into Blue 7.

Step 2

Place the 4/3 domino from Blue 7 into Dark Blue = and the 3/3 domino next to that in the next two Dark Blue = tiles. The 6/6 domino goes into Orange = and the 2/1 domino goes from Blue 2 down into Purple 2.

Solution

Place the 1/3 domino from Purple 2 over into Dark Blue = and the 0/3 domino from Orange = into Dark Blue =. The 0/6 domino goes from Orange = into Green > 3 and the 0/1 domino goes below that from Orange = into Purple < 3. And that’s all she wrote!

This felt like a slightly larger Medium Pips to me rather than a full-fledged Hard Pips, but I guess it’s good to have some easier ones from time to time.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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