Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Friday, January 30

The weekend is just about here, Pipsqueaks, and we have some colorful tiles to fill before we can dive into our leisure activities, whatever those might be on a chilly January-into-February weekend. Grab some dominos and let’s solve this Pips!

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 will keep you dry in rainy weather. It’s an umbrella. No rain on our parade today. It’s also quite a puzzling Pips to get started on. Counting is crucial here, as we need to know which Pips will fill in the Orange = group, which has five tiles. Once we figure that out, we can figure out what domino goes in the Pink 5 tile smack dab in the middle.

Step 1

Start by placing the 5/1 domino from the Pink = group up into the Green < 2 tile at the base of the umbrella. Next, place the 5/3 domino from the central Pink 5 tile up into Orange =. The 4/3 domino goes down from the Pink 4 tile into Orange = and the 3/3 domino fills in the left two Orange = tiles.

Step 2

Place the 5/6 domino from the Purple 5 tile down into Blue = and the 6/3 domino down from Blue = into Orange =. Next, the 5/4 domino goes from the Dark Blue > 4 tile into Green 12 and the 4/4 domino fills in the next two Green 12 tiles. Plop that 0/0 domino into Blue = after that.

Solution

Place the 5/0 domino from Pink = into Purple = on the umbrella’s handle, and then the 0/6 domino up from Purple = into Dark Blue =. The 6/2 domino goes from Dark Blue = into the Orange 2 tile. Next, place the 2/2 domino into the two right tiles of Purple = on the left side of the umbrella, and the 2/5 domino from Purple = down into the one and only free tile.

This was definitely a tricky one, and at first I didn’t even notice that Orange = was five tiles, and I’d tried using the 5/3 domino down below from Pink = into Purple = and that was all going fine until I realized I was short on Pips for Orange =. A quick rejiggering of my approach, and I was off to the races. With protection from the rain.

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

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