Looking for help with today’s Easy, Medium and Hard NYT Pips puzzles? Whether you’re after a nudge in the right direction or just want to compare notes, below you’ll find everything you need to solve each of today’s Pips plus a full walkthrough for today’s Hard Pips.
Another Sunday, another Pips puzzle to solve. Well, three Pips puzzles to solve, as it so happens. Today’s Hard Pips continues the World Cup theme we’ve seen lately as soccer fever takes over the nation (and the world). If you’re not a big fan of soccer, however, there are plenty of other great things to watch this weekend.
But first, grab some dominoes and let’s to solving!
Looking for Saturday’s Pips? Read our guide right here.
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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:
Pips example
Screenshot: Erik Kain
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
Easy Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Today’s Medium Pips
Medium Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Today’s Hard Pips is the first half of the word “SOCCER” and there are a couple of important observations. First, we only have two blanks in our domino stash today, and both will be needed in Dark Blue 0. Second, in the “C” we need two 4’s and then pips to fulfill Blue = and Purple = which means that we’ll need pips that have one domino with both. I checked through our 4’s and found that a 4/6 and 4/1 combination would work here, so that’s where I began.
Step 1
Place the 4/6 domino from Pink 4 into Purple = and the 6/6 domino in the next two Purple = tiles. The 6/1 domino goes from Purple = into Blue = and the 1/4 domino goes from Blue = into Orange 4. Hop up to the “S” and place the 4/0 domino from Blue > 1 into Dark Blue 0 and the 0/1 domino from Dark Blue 0 into Orange 10 (they can’t go the other way, after all).
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Step 2
Move to the “O” and place the 5/3 domino from Green > 4 into Purple = and the 3/3 domino below that. The 3/2 domino goes from Purple = into Green < 3 and the 4/3 domino goes from PInk > 3 into Dark Blue < 4.
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Solution
Place the 1/3 domino in the next two tiles of Orange 10 and the 5/5 domino from Orange 10 into Blue 10. The 5/4 domino goes above that and the 6/2 domino goes from Purple 10 into Pink 10. Wrap up this Hard Pips with the 4/4 domino in the last two Pink 10 slots. T
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
This was another Pips that I thought would be harder than it ended up being, but luckily for all of us, it wasn’t so bad.
How’d you do on today’s Pips?
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