NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Thursday, May 14

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 Pips is more arithmetic. I keep wondering if they’ll give us an incorrect answer someday, like 2+2 = 5. Today’s is 7-1 = 6 and the 6 is where we’ll begin. With a 6, no less!

Step 1

An important guiding post for today’s Hard Pips is that we need two of our 1’s for the Purple 1 and Blue 1 tiles, which means we can’t use any 1’s in = groups. Start with the 6/3 domino from Orange 6 over into Blue = and the 3/5 domino from Blue = up into Green 10. Next, place the 5/0 domino from Green 10 into Dark Blue = and the 0/2 domino from Dark Blue = into Pink =.

Place the 2/2 domino in the remaining Pink = tiles and the 5/5 domino in Pink 10.

Step 2

Place the 4/4 domino (our last double) in Green = and the 6/2 domino from Blue 6 into Orange < 3. The 4/7 domino goes in Purple 7.

Solution

Next, place the 1/6 domino from Purple 1 up into Dark Blue > 10 and the 5/4 domino from Dark Blue > 10 into Pink 7. The 3/1 domino goes from Pink 7 over into Purple < 3. Place the 1/5 domino from Blue 1 down into Orange 10 and the 5/6 domino from Orange 10 down into the one and only free tile.

I found this Hard Pips rather straightforward, though I suppose I got lucky with some of my assumptions, including placing the 6/3 domino from left to right rather than trying to use a 6/5 domino from Orange 6 into Pink 10. Then again, maybe there’s a totally different way of solving this one!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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