NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Sunday, May 17

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 tricky because it’s very hard to know where to start. I ended up having to rearrange a few things. The important thing to realize is that just like yesterday’s Hard Pips, every domino in both these grids has to be placed vertically. This means that the Dark Blue 5 group needs to be completed with a single domino, as does the Purple = group in the smaller grid. Let’s begin.

Step 1

Start with the 4/2 domino from Green 4 up into Pink = and the 2/6 domino from Pink = up into the Purple 6 tile. The 5/2 domino goes from Blue 10 up into Pink = and the 6/6 domino goes next to that in the left two Blue = tiles.

Step 2

Next, place the 5/6 domino from Orange 9 up into Blue = and the 4/0 domino from Orange 9 down into the Green 0 tile. The 4/6 domino fills both tiles of Dark Blue 10 and the 0/5 domino goes from the first free tile up into Blue 10. Finish up Step 2 by placing the 4/1 domino in the Dark Blue 5 group.

Solution

Move over to the smaller grid and place the 5/5 domino in Purple = and the 1/6 domino from the far right tile of Orange ≠. Place the 6/0 and 3/2 tiles however you like in the remaining Orange ≠ tiles.

Have a great lazy Sunday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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