Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Thursday, February 26

We’re slowly approaching the end of the week and every day is a bit warmer than the last. Truly, spring is coming. We have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips to solve, and it’s another challenging Hard Pips especially. We have 16 dominos to fit into all these colorful tiles. Let’s get cracking!

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. 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:

Yesterday’s Hard Pips was CAT and today’s is DOG. What’s next? HORSE? PARROT? I suppose you could really get to some ultra-challenging Pips puzzles if you had that many letters. Thirty dominos to spread out. I found today’s a bit harder than yesterday’s, and had to start over at one point, though it turns out I was really close and just needed another pass to get it squared away.

Step 1

Start by placing the 6/6 domino in the left two tiles of Orange 17 in the “G” and then place the 5/4 from Orange 17 into the Blue = group. The 4/4 domino fills out the remaining Blue = tiles, and the 4/0 goes from Dark Blue 4 into Green 1.

Step 2

Next, place the 0/0 domino in the next two Green 1 tiles, and the 1/1 domino from Green 1 into Pink 4. The 3/5 domino goes from Pink 4 into Purple > 4. Move up to the “O” and place the 6/5 domino from Purple 12 into Pink 9.

Step 3

The 6/2 domino goes from Purple 12 into Orange = and the 2/1 domino goes from Orange = into Dark Blue 2. Place the 2/4 domino from Dark Blue 2 down into Pink 9. Next, move the “D” and place the 0/6 domino from Pink < 2 over into Purple 10.

Solution

Place the 4/2 domino from Purple 10 down into the first free tile and the 5/5 domino in the two left tiles of Green =. Next, place the 5/1 domino from Green = into the second free tile and the 3/3 domino into the two Blue 6 tiles. And that’s that!

At the beginning, I counted four dominos that could work in Blue 6, which is isolated from all other tiles, meaning it would require its own domino. All four of these — the 4/2, 5/1, 6/0 and 3/3 dominos all ended up in the “D” with two of these occupying a free tile. Only one domino in the “D” doesn’t add up to 6, in fact. I assume this is by design. It certainly makes the “D” the worst place to start (especially with two free tiles) and the best place to end!

How’d you do on today’s Pips? Let me know!

Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Be sure to follow me for all your daily puzzle-solving guides, TV show and movie reviews and more here on this blog!