NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Sunday, July 5

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:

Another grid-based Hard Pips, though this is the first vertical version of this puzzle-type we’ve seen. There are several clues:

• First, there are no doubles in our spread of 16 dominoes. That means any tiles with the same number next to one another provide us with crucial information.
• Second, we have five dominoes with a blank side, but only two tiles on the entire board that’s a 0 (there’s also a > 0). This means that three of our blank dominoes will ultimately go into free tiles.
• Finally, we have one 6 pips and no 6 tiles. This could go into a free tile or the Orange > 0 tile.

Let’s begin!

Step 1

We can place three dominoes with total certainty. The 2/1 domino goes from Orange 2 in the top right corner, down into Purple 1. The 5/1 domino goes from Purple 5 in the bottom left corner, up into Blue 1. And the 3/0 domino goes above that, from Dark Blue 3 into Purple 0. These are all 100% certain placements. My fourth placement here, from Pink 1 down into Green 3, was an educated guess. We have a lot of 4’s near this, including two potential 4/3 combos not including the Green 3. Notice also, we have four 4’s stacked on top of one another. Another good possible placement at this point would be either the 0/1 or 0/2 domino from Pink 0, but the fact that either of those is equally possible makes me lean toward the 1/3. In any case, let’s move on.

Step 2

We’ll get rid of these 4’s next. When I first did this, I didn’t place them correctly but I did learn a lot about what went wrong, and this still helped me solve this Hard Pips.

Place the 4/3 domino from Dark Blue 4 into Orange 3 and the 4/5 domino from Blue 4 into Orange 5. The 4/1 domino goes from Purple 4 into Pink 1 and the 4/2 domino goes from Dark Blue 4 into Orange 2.

Step 3

Many things are now obvious or at least more obvious now. Place the 5/3 domino from Pink 5 into Blue 3 at the very bottom and then the 2/5 domino from Orange > 0 into Green 5. Move up and to the left and place the 3/2 domino from Green 3 up into Pink 2. Now move to the top and place the 0/2 domino from Pink 0 into Blue 2 (since our 2/5 domino is gone and Blue 2/Green 5 can’t be paired).

Solution

We are left with four dominoes and four free tiles. We have a Purple 3, a Dark Blue 1, a Green 5 and a Blue 4 and we have all those dominos remaining, each with a blank half. Set these and you’re done!

Have a lovely Monday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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