NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Wednesday, July 8

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 the letter “D” and its lower-case companion baby “d” and it’s surprisingly tricky, though that might just be me. I have had a very busy day! In any case, the best starting place is the lower-case “d” because of the Purple 1, which really limits us. There is no domino that equals 10 which means we have to pair the Purple 1 with half of Green 10, and only the 1/5 fits.

Step 1

Start there, the 1/5 domino going into Green 10 and the 5/0 below it from Green 10 into Purple =. The 0/4 domino goes from Purple = into Orange 10 and the 6/6 domino goes from Orange 1- into Dark Blue =. Stick the 6/0 domino above that from Dark Blue = into the first free tile.

Step 2

Hop over the the “D” and place the 6/2 domino from Green > 4 into Dark Blue 5 and the 3/1 from Dark Blue 5 into Pink 4. The 3/1 domino goes from Pink 4 into Blue 1 and the 1/2 sits on top of that from Blue 1 into Purple 4.

Solution

Place the 2/0 domino from Purple 4 into Pink = and the 0/0 in the remaining Pink = tiles. The 4/2 domino goes from Blue > 0 into Orange 3 and the 1/0 domino sits above that from Orange 3 into the second free tile.

It seems kind of easy after the fact, but this one had me rearranging dominoes left and right.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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