NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Friday, June 26

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:

A unique Hard Pips today, all lines offset slightly in a vertical pattern. The best place to start is at the end, with the more specific conditions. The bars on the far left are somewhat open to interpretation, as it were, and can be fulfilled by and large with many different dominoes.

Step 1

Place the 1/1 domino from Orange 1 into Green 13 and the 6/6 domino in the remaining Green 13 tiles. Move left and place the 5/4 domino in the top Blue 15 tiles and the 6/0 domino from Blue 15 down into Orange 0.

Step 2

Next, place the 0/0 domino in the top two tiles of Pink = and the 0/4 domino from Pink = down into Orange > 3. The 4/3 domino goes from Purple 4 into Dark Blue 7 and the 4/1 domino goes from Dark Blue 7 down into Blue 1.

Step 3

Place the 5/1 domino in the top tiles of Pink 7 and the 1/0 domino down from Pink 7 into Blue 0. The 3/0 domino goes from Green > 2 down into Orange 2 and the 2/5 goes below that, from Orange 2 into Pink > 4.

Solution

The 2/3 domino goes from Purple > 1 into Dark Blue > 2, followed by the 4/6 domino from Purple > 3 into Pink > 4. Next, the 0/2 domino sits in Dark Blue < 2 down into Blue < 3 and the 2/2 domino fills the Green < 4 tile down into Purple < 5.

It was tempting to start at the left side and fill each tile with the closest pip to each < and > number, and at least the first couple tiles would have been correct. But the real trick with today’s Hard Pips was figuring out how to make Green 13, Blue 15 and Pink and Dark Blue 7. Figuring those out first was key.

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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