NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Sunday, July 26

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 a camel and I don’t mean the cigarette. That would hardly be appropriate for a family-friendly game like this. In any case, there are several places we could start. I noticed we only have two 6’s and we have two 6 tiles so that means we know we need one in each and it also means that Blue 10 has to be made using two 5’s. So that’s kind of where we’ll begin.

Step 1

Place the 0/2 domino from Blue 0 up into Orange 3 in the camel’s tail and the 1/5 domino from Orange 3 to Blue 10. The 6/0 domino goes from Orange 6 into Purple = with the 0/0 domino above that and the 6/1 domino goes from Purple 6 into the Pink ≠ group.

Step 2

Place the 0/3 domino from Purple = into Pink ≠ and the 5/0 from Blue 10 into Pink ≠. The 2/2 goes from Green 2 into Pink ≠ and we’re finally done with that. Next, place the 3/4 domino from Dark Blue 3 down into Pink 7 and the 3/5 domino below that from Pink 7 into Dark Blue 5.

Solution

Toss the 4/5 domino in the camel’s hump. It’s the only one that will make Dark Blue 9 at this point. Next, the 5/2 domino goes from Green 5 into Orange 5 and the 3/1 domino goes from Orange 5 into Pink 1. The 1/2 domino goes from Pink 1 into Blue 5 and the 3/2 domino goes from Blue 5 up into Green 2. Done at last! Now go be lazy and fave fun!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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