NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Thursday, June4

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 spells out ‘TEN’ and we have three 10 groups and one >10 group to contend with. There’s an obvious starting point, but after the first domino we’ll have to make educated guesses.

Step 1

Begin with the 1/1 domino from Purple 1 to Pink 1. The 0/4 domino goes from Blue 0 down into Purple 10 and the 6/1 domino goes from Purple 10 down into Orange 1. Hop over to the ‘E’ and place the 0/6 domino from Dark Blue 0 down into Pink 10 and the 2/1 domino from Pink 10 into Blue 1.

Step 2

Next, place the 2/6 domino from Pink 10 down into Dark Blue = and the 6/6 domino next to that. Move over to the ‘N’ and place the 1/4 domino from Green 1 into Pink = and the 1/3 domino from Purple 1 into Blue =. Finally, place the 3/3 domino in the next two Blue = tiles.

Solution

Next, place the 5/5 domino below that in Orange = and the 4/4 domino in the remaining Pink = tiles. The 3/6 domino goes from Blue = into the lonely free tile and the 4/6 domino goes up in Green 10 in the ‘E.’ Finish off this Pips with the 5/6 domino in Orange > 10 up in the ‘T.’

All told, a reasonably challenging Hard Pips but not too bad. The only thing I really had to swap around was placing the 1/3 from Green 1 into Pink = and the 1/4 from Purple 1 into Blue = which left me short on something to make Green 10 work. Once I had that sorted, it all came together.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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