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 number 4, though there aren’t many 4 pip dominoes in our collection today. Nor do we have a really solid place to start, though we can safely assume that 1’s make up the big Green = group. The only other pip that would work is 5’s, but we need those for all the larger totals groups, since we have two = 10 groups, one = 9 group and a > 10 group.

Step 1

Start with the 6/4 domino from Dark Blue > 10 up into Purple = and the 6/1 domino from Dark Blue > 10 down into Green =. The 1/1 domino goes next to that in the bottom right Green = tiles and the 1/2 goes from Green = up into Pink 2.

Step 2

Place the 4/0 domino from Purple = over into Pink 2 and the 4/1 domino from Blue 9 up into Green =. The 5/2 domino goes from Purple 10 over into Pink 4 and the 5/1 domino goes from Purple 10 up into Orange 7.

Solution

Place the 5/5 domino in the Blue 10 group and the 6/2 domino from Orange 7 down into Pink 4. The 5/0 domino goes from Blue 9 into the first free tile, and wrap things up with the 3/0 domino from Orange > 3 over into the second free tile.

This was a real challenge for me today and I found myself trying all sorts of combinations before this one finally came together. There are simply so many ways you can make 10 or 7 or 9 and the presence of one lonely 3 really threw me off. But I got there eventually, through grit and determination.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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