NYT Pips Hints, Walkthrough And Solutions — Sunday, October 19

Having trouble with today’s Pips? Fear not! Below you’ll find a helpful walkthrough for the Hard-tier Pips and answers for the Easy and Medium Pips as well. The latest game from the NYT Games app is also my current favorite, even if it trades word-puzzling for dominoes and colorful tiles—or maybe because it trades words for a totally different kind of logic. Let’s solve today’s, shall we?

Looking for Saturday’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

Today’s Hard Pips

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

Today’s Pips looks a bit like a road. A bend in the road. The challenge here is making sure you place the middle section properly, or you’ll find yourself cut-off. It’s also tricky, because we have two groups that require 18 total pips, and that means all six of our 6’s will be required in those two groups.

Step 1

The obvious place to start is at the bottom. Since we know we have to use all our 6’s in the Purple 18 and Orange 18 groups, we also know that the Blue 10 can’t be a 4/6 combo. This means the double 5/5 domino needs to go there.

I got a little mixed up in the next part, first attempting to place the 6/1 domino from Purple 18 into Pink <4 but that didn’t work, so I placed the 6/6 domino horizontally above the 5/5 domino instead. Then I placed the 6/5 domino from Purple 18 up into Dark Blue >4.

Step 2

Next, I placed the 4/2 domino from Green 8 down into Pink <4. The 1/6 domino goes from Pink <4 over into Orange 18, and the 4/6 domino lays on top of that, from Green 8 into Orange 18.

Solution

Next up, the 3/6 domino goes from Pink 6 into Orange 18, finishing that group off. The 5/2 domino goes from Blue >4 into Purple = and we’ll knock out Purple = with the 2/2 domino. Last, but not least, the 3/4 domino goes from Pink 6 into the single free tile. And we’re done!

I definitely got a bit confused and lost in that first section, mostly because my assumption that the 6/1 domino would go into Pink <4 was incorrect, and I kept thinking this doesn’t make sense! I don’t have enough 6’s to make this work! Simply removing that and trying a different approach made the rest of this Hard Pips pretty straightforward.

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