NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Monday, May 18

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 another easy math problem. 11 – 7 = 4. So far we’ve gotten lots of subtraction and very little addition, probably because a + sign isn’t conducive to this game’s structure. In any case, the best place to start is with our trove of 6’s, because in the “11” portion we have an Orange 11 and a Dark Blue > 11, which means we need three of our 4 6’s right there.

Step 1

We know we need the 3/6 from Green 3 up into Dark Blue > 11 so start with that one, then place the 3/5 domino from Dark Blue 3 into Orange 11. The 6/4 is the only domino that can go from Orange 11 into Blue > 2 at this point, so slap that there and 6/0 is the only domino we have left that can go in Orange > 4 over into Dark Blue < 2. That leaves us with the 6/2 domino which has to go from Dark Blue > 11 into the first free tile.

Step 2

Next, place the 2/5 domino from Purple > 1 into Pink 7 over in the “7” and the 2/1 domino from Pink 7 into Blue 7. The 3/3 domino finishes up Blue 7. Now place the 4/0 domino from Green > 2 into Purple < 2 and the 2/3 domino from the second free tile into Purple 3.

Solution

Place the 5/5 domino in Pink 14 with the 4/4 domino below that, horizontally into the third free tile. The 0/0 domino goes in the top two Blue = tiles with the 0/1 domino from Blue = into the fourth and final free tile.

I admit, this seemed pretty daunting at first until I realized that 3/6 had to go from Green 3 into Dark Blue > 11. That meant the 3/5 domino had to go in Dark Blue 3 up into Orange 11 and then everything cascaded from there. The only place I got a little turned around was in the “7” which I initially got wrong and had to go back and make some adjustments. All told, not terribly difficult but still a pretty fun Hard Pips.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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