Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Saturday, January 24

Saturday is here at last, and we have tiles to fill and dominos to spread out in what is a pretty challenging set of Pips. Both Medium and Hard were tough today, which is a nice change from yesterday’s Hard Pips. Let’s solve this Pips!

Looking for Friday’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. 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 a diabolical spiral that certainly had my head spinning. There are four doubles today, and really any one of them could theoretically work in the Dark Blue = and Green = groups that require them. I had to trial and error quite a bit before figuring this one out, because a single wrong assumption can lead you into a corner and it’s hard to get unstuck. Even the two tiles we know for sure — the Purple 0 tile and the Green 0 tile — could use either 0/6 or 0/5 and it’s not at all obvious which at first.

Step 1

Start by placing the 0/5 domino from Green 0 into Dark Blue > 10. Place the 0/6 domino from Purple 0 into Pink > 21. Next, place the 6/1 domino from Dark Blue > 10 into Orange 2 and the 1/3 domino from Orange 2 into Blue 5. The 2/0 domino goes from Blue 5 into Dark Blue =.

Step 2

Place the 0/0 domino in Dark Blue = and the 0/1 domino from Dark Blue = into the Purple 1 group. Next, place the 3/3 domino in the top right two tiles of Green = and the 3/5 domino from Green = down into Pink > 21.

Step 3

We’ve avoided free tiles so far, but we can safely fill one in this step. Place the 5/6 domino in the remaining Pink > 21 tiles and the 1/5 domino from the first free tile up into Orange 10. The 5/2 domino goes from Orange 10 into Blue 6 and the 2/2 domino fills in the remaining Blue 6 tiles.

Solution

Finally, place the 1/1 domino in Pink = and the 0/3 domino from Purple 1 into the second free tile. The 3/4 domino goes from Green = down into the third and final free tile. And that’s a wrap!

Did you struggle with this one as much as I did? Having so many small groups and so many doubles really made this a challenge. But I enjoy a good challenge!

How’d you do on today’s Pips? Let me know!

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