NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Wednesday, May 27

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:

Another boxy, single-tile grid for today’s Hard Pips. These are always trial-and-error puzzles, though you can usually find a reasonable starting point, even if you have to make some guesses and adjust as you go. We have two doubles today, so I started with those. My hunch was that they’d each go in a corner, and this hunch proved correct.

Step 1

Start with the 4/4 domino in the top left corner from Purple 4 to Pink 4. The 3/4 domino goes next to that from Blue 3 to Orange 4, then the 3/3 domino in the top right corner from Dark Blue 3 to Green 3. The 3/1 domino goes below that, from Purple 3 into Pink 1 and the 6/4 domino goes from Green 6 down into Purple 4.

Step 2

The 2/4 domino goes from Dark Blue 2 in the middle down into Green 4. Next, we’ll move to the left of the board and place the 2/1 domino from Blue 2 up into Pink 1. The 5/0 domino lays horizontally from Blue 5 into Orange 0 and the 2/3 domino goes directly below that, from Orange 2 into Dark Blue 3. Finally, place the 1/0 domino from Orange 1 at the bottom over into Dark Blue 0.

Solution

Place the 4/1 domino above that from Purple 4 over into Green 1 and the 2/0 domino from Dark Blue 2 down into Blue 0. The 5/4 domino goes from Orange 5 down into the first free tile. The 6/2 domino goes from Pink 6 on the right lower corner, over into the second free tile. Last, but not least, the 3/5 domino goes from Green 3 into the third and final free tile.

This was a fun challenge (as was today’s Medium Pips) though not nearly as hard as some of these grid-style Hard Pips can be!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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