Walkthrough And Solutions For Thursday, October 23

We have another challenging NYT Pips puzzle to solve today, ladies and Pipsqueaks. These have been super tricky lately, but not to fear: I have a detailed walkthrough below as well as the finished Easy, Medium and Hard Pips for this fine Thursday in October. Halloween is just around the corner and the crisp autumn air is lovely and refreshing. If only we could skip winter! For now, let’s solve these Pips puzzles!

Looking for Wednesday’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

Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

This heart-shaped Hard Pips is quite daunting! We have 16 dominoes and a bunch of conditions on the grid. A few observations before we get started:

• The Purple = group requires six of the same pips and after a quick count, that means they’ll need to be 3’s.
• We’ll need four of our 6’s to fulfill the Dark Blue 24 group, and basically the remaining 5’s and 6’s to complete Green 26.
• Each of the double tiles in Purple =, Dark Blue 24 and Orange 1 will need to be doubles.

Step 1

The best place to start is the Purple = group since we know it has to be 3’s. First, lay the 3/3 domino at the top, then place the 3/2 domino over into the Orange 2 tile, the 3/0 domino into Pink < 7, the 3/4 domino into the free tile and the 3/6 domino into Green 26. We’ll need the rest of our 6’s for Dark Blue 24.

Step 2

That’s a good place to go next. Place the 6/6 domino on the far right of Dark Blue 24, then the 6/4 domino from Dark Blue 24 into Pink < 7 and the the 6/2 domino down from Dark Blue 24 into Blue =. Finish this step by placing the 5/2 domino from Green 26 into Blue =.

Step 3

Next, slot the 5/1 domino from Green 26 into Pink < 7 and the 1/1 domino from Pink < 7 into Blue < 2. Then place the 5/5 domino in the remaining Green 26 tiles and the 2/0 domino fro Blue = into the Orange 1 group.

Solution

Not much left now! The 0/0 domino goes in the bottom two Orange 1 tiles and the 1/4 domino goes from Orange 1 into the last free tile. That leaves us with yet another double-sided domino. Place the 4/4 domino into the Pink = group and you’re done!

Where I messed up originally on this Pips was trying to place the 6/2 domino into Pink < 7 and the 6/4 domino down into Blue =. There were enough 2’s or 4’s to make Blue = work, and I was going for the lowest numbers I had for the Pink < 7 group. But this made it impossible to finish Green 26 so I had to clear some tiles and try a different route. Thankfully, swapping these two and reorienting a bit did the trick! What did you think of today’s Heart-Shaped Pips?

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