NYT Pips Hints, Walkthrough And Solutions For Wednesday, Oct 29

Wednesday is here, and with it another Pips puzzle to solve. We have dominoes to lay down and colorful tiles to fill up. Below, you’ll find the solutions for the Easy and Medium-tier Pips and a full walkthrough of the Hard Pips, which wasn’t as hard as other recent entries, but I can see how it could be befuddling. It’s a very twisty-windy Pips today. Let’s solve it!

Looking for Tuesday’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 is a vaguely bird-like, vaguely boat-like shape. We’ll just call it a seagull. Mostly, we have total groups here, with a couple less than tiles and one = group. Most of the total groups are small, and we have three 9 groups, which is interesting because we only have one 6. To me, this meant that one of these 9 groups would use a 6 and a 3, one would use a 5 and a 4, and the third (which has three tiles) would use three 3’s. If that’s the case, we probably need to fill the Blue 6 group with something other than 6’s or 3’s.

Step 1

Start by laying the 2/1 domino from the seagull’s beak (Orange < 3) into Blue 6. Next, place the 5/0 domino from Blue 6 into Purple 0 and the 0/6 domino from Purple 0 into Dark Blue 9.

Step 2

Place the 3/4 domino from Dark Blue 9 into Green 9 and the 5/3 domino from Green 9 into Blue 9. Then place the 3/3 domino in the remaining Blue 9 tiles.

Since we need the 0/0 tile for Pink 1, let’s place the 2/2 tile into Orange = like so:

Step 3

We’ll hop back over to Pink 1 and place the 0/0 domino in the seagull’s tailfeathers, and the 1/0 tile domino from Pink 1 into Dark Blue 0. Next, place the 0/2 domino from Dark Blue 0 into Pink 7.

Solution

Place the 5/1 domino from Pink 7 into Purple < 3 and wrap things up with the 2/4 domino from Green 2 into the single, central free tile. That’s all, folks!

This was unusual for me, but I basically laid every domino perfectly today. I started in Orange < 3 with the assumptions about 6’s and 3’s and just went one to the next all the way around in something of a spiral, ending on the free tile without a single error and without having to redo anything. That almost never happens! I’d call it luck, but I think this time around I really was just able to see what was coming and plan accordingly. How did you do?

P.S. We’ve seen a lot of Hard Pips puzzles lately with multiple possible solutions, but I think it’s safe to say that this one has just one solution. I could be wrong!

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