NYT Pips Hints, Walkthrough And Solutions — Friday, October 10

Friday is here at last. Huzzah! It’s almost time for the weekend, though I no longer really differentiate between weekdays and weekends. I work every day, 365 days a year. But I spread my work out across the days, and I love what I do, so I can’t complain. And weekends are nice because there’s no early morning drive to drop kids off at school, so that’s a perk.

In any case, we have some dominoes that need placing. Let’s get right to it!

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. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

NYT Pips Today: Hints and Answers for Saturday, October 4

Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Hard puzzle. Spoilers ahead.

Easy

Medium

Hard

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

Well, no means no. I guess we just won’t solve today’s Hard Pips, after all!

I jest, oh my Pipsqueaks, I jest. Today’s is quite the pickle, and I think the “no” is meant more as an “Oh no!” than anything. But there’s a clear place to begin, and that’s always helpful.

Step 1

The obvious starting point here is Purple 18 in the top left corner of the N. We know these have to be 6’s and we know the double 6 domino has to go in the top left tiles. Next, we’ll place the 6/5 domino in the remaining Purple 18 tile down into Dark Blue 10.

We only have 5 blank tiles and we’ll need four of these for Green 0. We’ll place the 0/1 from Orange 0 into Purple 5 and the 4/5 domino from Purple 5 into Dark Blue 10.

Step 2

Next, I moved to the big Pink = group. We only have one number that can fulfill this requirement: 3. No other domino has enough remaining to make 5 tiles work. I’ll start with the obvious two: 5/3 goes from Dark Blue 5 into Pink = and the 3/3 domino goes right in the middle of Pink =.

Step 3

Without a super clear idea of what comes next in the “N” it’s time to hop over to the “O”. At this point, we know all four 0 dominoes have to go into Green 0 and the only number that can make Pink = work is 4. The 0/o domino goes in the middle two tiles of Green 0 and the 0/4 domino goes up into Pink =. We’ll lay the 4/4 domino above that and the 0/5 domino down from Green 0 into Purple 11.

Solution

This next part was a little tricky, since it’s possible to make Orange 5 work with a combination of either 1 and 4 or 2 and 3. The thing you have to realize here is that we still need two 3’s for Pink = over on the “N” side. Place the 4/1 domino from Pink = down into Orange 5, then the 4/3 domino from Orange 5 into Blue =. The 3/6 domino goes below that from Blue = into Purple 11.

Next, swing back over the “N” and place the 3/1 domino from Pink = into the free tile. Then place the 3/2 domino from Pink = into Blue = and the 2/6 domino from Blue = into the final free tile. And that’s a wrap!

This wasn’t a tricky Pips to get started but I definitely got a bit hung up on the left side of the “O” when I used one too many 3’s and didn’t have enough to finish the “N” but once I backtracked a bit and made the Orange 5 work with a 1 and a 4, that did the trick. How did you do?

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