Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Friday, January 23

TGIF, Pipsqueaks. The weekend is nigh. Time to hang up your hats and kick off your boots and curl up with some puzzle games. Grab your dominos, because we have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips to solve! (Though today, the Medium is actually harder than the Hard, in my humble opinion).

Looking for Thursday’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 probably the easiest I’ve ever encountered. There’s not a super obvious place to start, but I just went with what seemed like the right move and everything lined up perfectly. This one only took me just over a minute.

Step 1

I assumed that my strategy today would lead to me having to juggle at least a domino or two, but it all worked out. I started with the 3/2 domino from Green 9 into Purple 3 and the 6/1 domino directly above that. Then I plopped the 5/5 domino into Dark Blue 10 and the 3/3 domino into Orange 6. At this point, I thought surely I’d have to adjust in one side of the “Y” or another.

Step 2

I tossed the 2/5 into Blue 7 and then the 0/5 from the first free tile into Purple 7. The 1/1 finished that group out, and I realized I was pretty much at the finish line.

Solution

The 2/2 domino filled up the first two tiles of Pink 5 and the 1/0 fit nicely from Pink 5 into the second free tile. The 0/0 domino filled up the last two free tiles, and that was that!

I suppose you could get mixed up here and maybe there are even alternative solutions to this that are a bit more complicated, but this was a breeze. It’s crazy how hard some of these are and then you get what amounts to basically a freebie.

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

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