NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Sunday, May 24

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 is the word “ONE” as in a “one hit wonder” or the band The Oneders from That Thing You Do. It’s a bit tricky to know where to start since all the groups are either = groups, 1 groups/tiles or 11 groups tiles with just a couple > 1 tiles thrown into the mix. I started with the “N” since I had a pretty good idea what needed to go in the Orange = group based on the available 6’s.

Step 1

Place the 1/3 domino from Pink 1 into Orange = and the 4/4 domino in Green =. The 3/3 domino goes in the next Orange = tiles and the 3/6 domino goes from Orange = into Purple 11. The 1/5 domino goes from Pink 1 into Purple 11.

Step 2

Hope over the “E” and place the 2/1 domino from Green > 1 into Dark Blue 1. The 1/4 domino goes from Orange 1 into Blue 11 and the 2/0 domino goes horizontally in the next two Blue 11 tiles. The 5/6 domino goes from Blue 11 into Green > 11 and the 6/2 domino slides into Green > 11 over to Purple > 1.

Solution

Move to the “O” and place the 1/1 domino from Pink 1 to Purple 1. The 1/6 domino goes down from Orange 1 into Dark Blue 11 and the 5/5 domino goes from Dark Blue 11 into Blue 11. The 4/2 domino finishes up Blue 11 and the “O” and all you have left is the 1/0 domino in the “N” from Dark Blue 1 into the one and only blank tile.

Enjoy the rest of your Memorial Day Weekend, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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