NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Wednesday, July 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 the second letter of the alphabet, following on the heels of yesterday’s “Aa”. We have “Bb” today and the trickiest part is in the little “b” where we have a 6-tile ≠ group. There’s no perfect start point, either, and this one took me some trial and error to solve.

Step 1

Start with the 4/3 domino from Pink 4 into Purple 8 and the 5/6 domino from Purple 8 into Blue 9. The 3/6 domino goes below that, from Blue 9 into Green > 9 and the 6/0 below that, from Green > 9 into Dark Blue 2. We need to get rid of all these 6’s, so place the 6/6 domino in Purple > 9.

Step 2

Next, place the 2/0 domino from Dark Blue 2 into Purple 4 and the 4/4 domino from Purple 4 into Pink 4. The 2/2 domino fills the Orange = group and the 1/1 domino goes in Blue 2.

Solution

Get rid of our last double with the 0/0 domino from Dark Blue 0 into Pink 2 and place the 2/3 domino from Pink 2 into Orange ≠. The 1/6 domino goes from Green < 2 into Orange ≠ and the 4/1 and 2/5 dominoes fill in the remaining Orange ≠ tiles. Presto, voila! We’re done.

Happy July, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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