NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Saturday, August 1

How To Play Pips

In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored 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 a + sign surrounded by tiles. I guess. It’s also a bit tricky, but we have some clues. The Dark Blue 4 in the left corner suggests that Pink = will not also be 4’s, but it will probably be something that has a domino whose other half is whatever fills up Green =. My gut said put that 4/3 domino down, and so I did. Let’s star there.

Step 1

Place the 4/3 domino from Dark Blue 4 over into Pink = and the 3/3 domino directly above that in Pink =. The 3/0 domino goes from Pink = over into Green = and the 0/0 domino goes above that in the next two Green = tiles. The 5/5 domino fills up Purple 10.

Step 2

Moving up the left side, place the 3/6 domino from Pink 3 into Dark Blue 10 and the 4/1 from Dark Blue 10 into Blue =. The 1/2 domino goes from Blue = over into Orange = and the 3/5 domino goes above that, from Purple 3 into Pink 9. The 4/2 domino goes from Pink 9 down into Orange =.

Solution

We’re cooking now. Pop the 2/0 domino from Orange = into Green = and the 2/6 domino from Orange = into Purple 10. The 4/4 domino goes from Purple 10 down into Orange 9 and the 1/5 domino goes from Blue = into Orange 9. Last, but not least, the 0/1 domino goes from Green = into Blue = and we’re all done.

Happy new month, my dearest Pipsqueaks. May your August be, like the word itself, grand and illustrious.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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