Today’s NYT Pips Hints And Solutions For Saturday, August 30th

I typically give you all names when it comes to these puzzle guides. Wordle players are “Wordlers”. Strands players are “Strandistarians” or “Strandistas.” Connections players are “Connectioneers.” Mini Crossword players are “Crosswordlers.” But what about Pips players? What should we call this new gang of puzzle-solving ladies and gentlemen? Pipsees? Pippers? Pipsqueaks?

Haha, I kind of like Pipsqueaks, though it’s not flattering necessarily. Endearing? Definitely. Alright you Pipsqueaks, let’s solve today’s Pips!

Looking for Friday’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 can 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 “more than.” 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 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 Solution

Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Difficult puzzle. Spoilers ahead.

Easy

Medium

Difficult

Okay, let’s dive into the Difficult tier for today’s Pips. Here’s what it looked like before starting:

This is very daunting. We have 13 dominoes to place. There are lots of groups that have to total various numbers: 11, 1, 4, 4, 12, 4, 0, 4 and 7. There are just two groups that must include all = numbers, one that has 3 and one that has 7 tiles. There are no < or > or ≠ and there is only one tile that can be anything.

How I began this was by identifying the most difficult or specific condition to fill on the board. This time, it’s the Green = group. That has to have 7 tiles of the same number of pips. I counted my dominoes and only the 2 pips have a total of 7. That meant that every single domino with 2 pips on one side had to go in those green boxes. There was only one 2/2 domino, so every other 2 had to either be placed vertically going up or vertically going down.

The top tiles on this board, above the Green group, are five across. This means that three cannot lay across horizontally, so it has to be some combination of horizontal and vertical placement. I found the 2/6 domino and placed it in Green up into the Orange 12 group. Then I placed the 6/4 domino in the Orange 12 group sideways into the Blue 4 tile. I placed the 2/4 domino in the Green group vertically up inot the Dark Blue 4 tile. Then I placed the 1/5 domino in the Pink 1 tile, horizontally into the Purple 11 group. Like so:

This wasn’t exactly guess work, though I wasn’t 100% sure everything would work at this point. I had identified the Green Group condition. I knew that every 2 pip placed had to correspond and fit properly with every other tile or group it would split off into.

From here, feeling rather confident, I kept working the right side of the board. I had to figure out what the Blue = group was going to be. It might be blanks or threes, I deduced, but three seemed more likely since there was also a Dark Blue 0 group that would require, well, three blanks. Working with that in mind, I placed the 2/0 at the end of the Green group vertically down into the Orange 4 group. Then I placed the 2/3 from Green into Blue =. I placed the 3/4 from Blue = into Orange 4 and the 0/3 domino from the Dark Blue 0 into Blue =.

I needed to wrap up the Dark Blue 0 group so I placed the 0/4 domino up into the lone Pink 4 tile and the 0/6 domino from Dark Blue into Purple 7. This is what the grid looked like now:

I only had three dominoes remaining at this point, and I was 100% sure I’d solved the puzzle. I placed the 2/1 domino from Green into Purple, the 2/2 domino horizontal to finish up the Green group, and the final 6/3 domino vertically to finish the upper Purple 11 group. Voila!

This was one of those Pips puzzles that seemed a lot worse at first with so many tiles and dominoes to work with. Daunting at first, but then pretty straightforward once you gained a little momentum. The lack of other conditions beyond totals and equals made this a lot less challenging. How did you do?

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