NYT ‘Pips’ Tips, Answers and Progress for Sunday June 14th

How to play Pips

In Pips, you have a grid of colorful boxes. Each colored area represents a different “condition” you need to achieve. You have a selected number of dominoes to spend filling the grid. You have to use every domino and get every condition right to win. There are Easy, Medium and Hard levels.

Here is an example of a difficult Pips level:

As you can see, the grid has a bunch of symbols and numbers with each color. On the far left, the three purple squares should not be equal to each other (hence the crossed out equal sign). The two pink squares next to it must add up to 0. The blue zigzag squares must all be equal to each other. You click on the dominoes to rotate them, and you will need to, since they need to be rotated to fit where they belong.

No other conditions such as “less than” or “greater than” appear in this grid. If there are multiple tiles with the > or < signs, the total of those tiles must be greater or less than the listed number. Varies by grid. White spaces can be anything. The various possible conditions are:

• = All pips must be equal to each other in this group.
• ≠ All pips must not be equal to each other in this group.
• > The pip on that tile (or tiles) must be greater than the number listed.
• < The pip on this tile must be less than the listed number.
• An exact number (like 6) The pip must equal that exact number.
• Unconditional tiles can be anything.

To win, you must use all your dominoes by filling in all the squares, making sure they match each condition. Sometimes there is only one way to solve the puzzle. Other times, there may be two or more different solutions. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

Today’s Pips Solutions and Walkthrough

Below are the solutions for Easy and Medium Pips. After that, I will walk you through the Hard puzzle. Spoiler ahead.

Today’s Easy Pips

Today’s Medium Pips

Hard Pips Walkthrough and Solution

Here are today’s Hard Pips:

Today’s Hard Pips is the first half of the word “FOOTBALL” and there are some important observations. First, we only have two blanks in our domino stock today and both will be needed on Dark Blue 0. Second, at “C” we need two 4’s and then pips to fulfill Blue = and Purple = which means we will need pips that have a domino with both. I checked through our 4 and found that a combination of 4/6 and 4/1 would work here, so that’s where I started.

Step 1

Place the 4/6 domino from Pink 4 on Purple = and the 6/6 domino on the next two Purple = tiles. The 6/1 domino goes from Purple = to Blue = and the 1/4 domino goes from Blue = to Orange 4. Go up to “S” and place the 4/0 domino from Blue > 1 to Dark Blue 0 and the 0/1 domino from Dark Blue 0 to Orange 10 (they can’t go the other way).

Step 2

Move to “O” and place the 5/3 domino from Green > 4 to Purple = and the 3/3 domino below it. The 3/2 domino goes from Purple = to Green < 3 και το ντόμινο 4/3 πηγαίνει από ΡΟΖ > 3 in Dark Blue < 4.

Solution

Place the 1/3 domino on the next two tiles of Orange 10 and the 5/5 domino from Orange 10 to Blue 10. The 5/4 domino goes on top of that and the 6/2 domino goes from Purple 10 to Pink 10. Wrap this Hard Pips with the last 4/4 Pink. T

This was another Pips that I thought would be harder than it turned out, but luckily for all of us, it wasn’t that bad.

How did you do in today’s Pips?

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