NYT Pips Hints, Walkthrough And Solutions For Thursday, Oct 30

Holy smokes, folks, it’s almost the end of October! I guess all this Pips-solving has kept us busy, and time flies when you’re busy. They say “time flies when you’re having fun” but I think that’s too narrow. Anything that keeps you busy but isn’t super tedious makes time fly. Time only really drags when you’re thinking about how you wish it would go faster — in traffic, say, or waiting in line. But I digress. We have a trio of Easy, Medium and Hard Pips puzzles to solve, so let’s lay down some dominoes!

Looking for Wednesday’s Pips? Read our guide right here.

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. 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:

Ten dominoes make up this medium-sized (and I’d argue, medium-challenging) Hard Pips. It looks like the word “HE” to me, though the “H” is rather smaller than the “E.” So what can we glean from this at first blush?

There’s nothing super obvious here, though we clearly will need one of our blank-sided dominoes in the Green 0 tile and another in the Pink 1 tile. A safe guess is the 0/2 domino will go there because of the Purple 2 tile next to it, but it’s not for sure just yet.

We also know that the big Dark Blue 25 group will likely consist of some 5’s but it can’t be all 5’s or we’d reach 30. It could also consist of 6’s and 4’s but I went in with the assumption that it would be 5’s. We also know that the Orange 17 group will require two 6’s and one 5. So let’s begin.

Step 1

Since Blue = needs a double, and I’ve already decided 5’s will go in Dark Blue 25, I began with the 6/6 domino in Blue = and then the 6/5 domino from Blue = down into Dark Blue 25. Next, I placed the 0/5 domino from Green 0 into Dark Blue 25.

Step 2

I have two more 6’s, so I placed the 6/2 in Orange 17 up into Purple >1 and the 6/1 domino from Orange 17 down into the free tile. I finished the Orange 17 group by placing the 5/5 domino from there into Dark Blue 25.

Solution

Next, I placed the 4/2 domino from Pink < 5 into Dark Blue 25 and the 5/3 domino into the remaining two Dark Blue 25 tiles. You could also use this domino where I placed the 5/5 and use the 5/5 domino here. It doesn’t make a difference.

Finally, I placed the 2/0 domino from Purple 2 into Pink 1 and the 1/1 domino from Pink 1 into the last remaining free tile. And that’s a wrap!

Clearly you can maneuver a bit within the Dark Blue 25 group, but I am curious if anyone found an alternative solution to this one today. I’ve been getting a lot of messages from you fine Pipsqueaks sharing solutions that differ from mine, and it’s kind of fun to see how other people solved these. There’s not always more than one solution, but I’ve seen as many as three before.

Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Be sure to follow me for all your daily puzzle-solving guides, TV show and movie reviews and more here on this blog!