NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Monday, June 1

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 all about counting. We need something that can fill the Dark Blue = group, which means 5 of the same pip. Our second most populous pip needs to work in Blue = and neither can be blanks, since we have five total Purple 0 tiles to fill in, plus a Green 0. With a Pink 4 tile, we can’t use 4’s in Dark Blue =, so that means 2’s. 4’s will go in Blue =. This gives us a good starting place.

Step 1

Place the 5/2 domino from Purple 10 down into Dark Blue = and the 2/4 domino from Dark Blue = down into Pink 4. The 2/2 domino goes in the next two Dark Blue = slots and the 0/0 domino sits directly beneath that, in the first two Purple 0 tiles. The 0/3 domino goes from Purple 0 into the Green 3 tile.

Step 2

Place the 2/1 domino from Dark Blue = into Orange 2 and the 1/3 domino from Orange 2 into Pink 3. Move back to the right side of the grid and place the 5/4 domino from Purple 10 into Blue = and the 0/4 domino from Green 0 into the next Blue = tile. The 4/4 fills in the rest of the Blue = tiles.

Solution

Place the 2/0 domino from Pink ≠ into Purple 0 and the 3/5 domino from Pink ≠ into Orange 10. The 5/0 domino goes from Orange 10 into Purple 0 and the 6/1 domino goes from Blue 6 into Pink ≠. Finally, the 1/4 domino goes from Dark Blue 1 into the final Pink ≠ tile and you’re done!

Have a lovely first day of June, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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