How To Solve Today’s NYT Pips Puzzles, Monday August 24

How To Play Pips

In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored 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:

This funky-looking Pips isn’t really any discernable shape or letter or animal. And there’s not entirely obvious starting points, though I did notice right off the bat that there are only two dominoes with 2 pips. One is 2/2 and the other is 2/6. We can’t really put the 2/2 from Orange 2 to either Green > 8 or Dark Blue = which means we have to use the 2/6. The only sensible place to begin, then, is . . .

Step 1

Place the 2/6 domino from Orange 2 up into Green > 8 and the 6/1 domino above that from Green > 8 into Orange 1. Th 0/5 goes from Orange 1 into Purple 10 and the 10/4 from Purple 10 into Pink =.

Step 2

We know we can’t make Dark Blue 2 work with a single domino so we have to place the 4/3 domino from Pink = over into Blue = and the 0/3 domino from Dark Blue 2 into Blue =. The 3/3 domino goes in the remaining Blue = tiles and we’ll toss that 5/5 domino into Dark Blue = at the bottom, since we know the 2/2 won’t be going there.

Solution

The 2/2 domino goes from Dark Blue 2 into the one and only free tile. Then place the 4/1 domino from Purple 10 down into Pink 2 and the 6/0 domino from Purple 10 into Blue =. Wrap this puzzle up with the 1/0 domino from Pink 2 over into Blue = and you’re done!

Have a sunny magical Monday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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