Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Tuesday, January 27

It’s a bit chilly out, though it sounds like it’s a lot colder in other parts of the country. A lot snowier, too, which I’m a bit jealous about. If you’re stuck inside with the snow, check out my Netflix movie recommendations here, once you’re done solving your daily NYT Games puzzles, of course. Gather your dominos and let’s get to solving this Pips!

Looking for Monday’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:

Today’s Hard Pips is totally a spaceship. It’s also the first time I’ve seen all > conditions, though there are three free tiles as well. The guiding principle in solving today’s Pips is to pick dominos that have the least headroom possible for each tile or group. So if it’s > 1, see if you can find a domino with a 2. If it’s > 0, find one with a 1 and so forth. Also, since 0 isn’t greater than anything, all three of our blank dominos will go into free tiles.

Step 1

Start in the bottom left corner by placing the 4/6 domino on Purple > 9. Place the 1/5 domino from Blue > 0 into Dark Blue > 15 and the 0/5 domino from the free tile into Dark Blue > 15. Place the 6/5 domino from Dark Blue 15 into Orange > 8. Notice, we have 10 total in Purple > 9, 1 in Blue > 0 and 16 in Dark Blue > 15.

Step 2

Place the 1/2 domino from Green > 0 into Pink > 1. The 4/1 domino goes from Orange > 8 into Dark Blue > 0. Next, the 1/3 domino goes from the upper Green > 0 tile into Purple > 8 and the 3/3 domino fills in the bottom two Purple > 8 tiles.

Solution

Place the 2/4 domino from Blue > 1 into Pink > 9 and the 6/0 domino from Pink > 9 into the second free tile. The 0/5 domino goes from the third free tile into Purple > 5 and the 2/2 domino fills in the final two Purple > 5 tiles. And we’re done!

This wasn’t a super challenging Hard Pips, mostly because I’ve always had this strategy for > tiles and groups. It doesn’t always work out like this, but I figured with so many > conditions, we’d need to stick as close to the numbers as possible.

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

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