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If you’re struggling with today’s New York Times Pips puzzles, you’ve landed in the right place. This delightful Thursday in October presents a new Hard Pips puzzle, and I’m here to guide you through it. Solutions for the Easy and Medium levels are also included. With October more than halfway through, we’re inching closer to Halloween, followed by Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Fans of Stranger Things can look forward to the fifth season, which spans November and the festive December holidays. But for now, let’s dive into today’s Pips challenge!
Missed Wednesday’s Pips? Check out our guide here.
How To Play Pips
Pips is a puzzle game featuring a grid of multicolored boxes. Each colored section corresponds to a specific “condition” you must fulfill. You have a limited number of dominoes to place within the grid, and to win, every domino must be used correctly to meet all conditions. The game offers three difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, and Hard.
Consider an example of a Hard Pips puzzle:
Here, the grid is filled with symbols and numbers associated with each color. On the far left, three purple squares must not match each other, as indicated by the crossed-out equal sign. The adjacent pink squares need to sum to zero. The blue squares, arranged in a zig-zag pattern, must all be identical. You can click on the dominoes to rotate them, which is often necessary to make them fit correctly.
Additional conditions, such as “less than” or “greater than,” do not appear on this grid. If multiple tiles display > or < symbols, their total must be greater or less than the specified number. The requirements can change with each grid. Blank spaces in the grid are open to any value. Here are the conditions you might encounter:
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.
NYT Pips Today: Hints, Answers 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.
Easy
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Medium
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Hard
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
I normally assign the Hard Pips a shape — a dog, a spaceship, or yesterday’s very obvious word PIPS, which was clever — but today? I have no clue. This is a blob. I’m not going to call it anything.
Step 1
I like to look for doubles in each Pips slate of dominoes. Doubles are often (but not always) necessary to finish off a group that can’t be reached from other directions. For instance, the lower Pink = group requires a double since the only way you can fill the two tiles on the right is with two of the same tiles. We’ll also need a double in the Purple 5 group, and it’s reasonable to assume that will be the 0/0 domino. But we won’t start there. We’ll start with the 4/4 domino in Pink = and the 4/3 domino from Pink = over into Green <4 like so:
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Step 2
We have two more = groups and based on the dominoes we have left, they’re like 6’s and 6’s. I’m going with 6’s in Blue and 5’s in Pink because we have a double 5 and it’s more likely that we’ll need that at an edge.
I placed the 1/5 domino from Dark Blue 2 into the free tile and the 1/6 domino from Dark Blue 2 into Blue =. Then I slotted the 6/2 domino from Blue = into Orange <4.
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Solution
Next up, the 5/5 domino goes into Pink = and the 5/6 domino slots from Pink = down into Blue =. Now we just have the big Purple 5 group. The 2/0 domino goes on the bottom right followed by the 0/0 domino exactly where I expected it to go. Finally, the 3/5 domino goes from Purple 5 into the last free tile. Voila! Presto! We’re done!
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
This was a moderately challenging Pips. I screwed up at first trying to start with Purple 5 and Dark Blue 2 but backtracked and started with the bottom left corner instead. This helped clarify things, and tackling both this corner and the right corner made the rest pretty straightforward. How’d you do?
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