For those tackling their Friday Pips puzzles and seeking a bit of assistance, you’ve come to the right place. This particular set of New York Times Games puzzles is particularly tough, especially with the Medium and Hard levels ramping up the complexity. However, isn’t a challenge part of the fun? Let’s delve into the world of dominoes and see how we can conquer it.

Missed out on Thursday’s Pips? Catch up with our comprehensive guide here.

How To Play Pips

Pips is a puzzle game where you are presented with a grid filled with multicolored boxes, each color indicating a specific “condition” that needs to be met. Your task is to use a predetermined set of dominoes to fill the grid while satisfying all the given conditions. Success hinges on using every domino correctly across the Easy, Medium, and Difficult levels.

Consider, for instance, a challenging Pips puzzle: the grid is sprinkled with symbols and numbers, each tied to its respective color. On the far left, there are three purple squares that must not match each other, signified by a crossed-out equal sign. Adjacent to them, two pink squares must sum up to zero. Meanwhile, the blue squares, which zig-zag across the grid, need to have identical values. You will need to click on the dominoes to rotate them, ensuring they fit perfectly into their designated spots.

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.

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

Medium

Hard

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

Another dog today, or perhaps a fox. Or an alpaca. Maybe I just want it to be something other than a dog, but it really looks like a little terrier of some sort, so dog it is.

This is also a very intimidating Pips! 16 dominoes and all sorts of various combinations make this a real challenge.

Step 1

The best place to start is in the tail. The Pink 30 group requires five 6’s so we know that the first domino we have to lay down is a 5/6 from Green >4 into Pink 30. Next, we’ll place the 6/1 domino from Pink 30 into Blue 3 and the 6/6 domino in the next two tiles of Pink 30, like so:

Step 2

We’ll finish off Pink 30 with the 6/4 domino into the free tile, and then place the 2/1 domino from Dark Blue 2 into Blue 3. Next, we’ll place the 1/0 domino from Blue 3 into Orange 0 and the 3/0 domino from the free tile into Orange 0. Normally, I like to end on free tiles, but today it makes more sense to go this route. I say this, because we only have four blank tiles, and we’ll need to use them up ahead in very specific ways.

We’ll start that by placing the 0/4 domino from Purple 0 into Pink = like so:

Step 3

The Pink = group could have been 4’s or 2’s but we’ll need the 2’s so 4 it is. Next, place the 0/2 domino from the nose’s Dark Blue 0 into Orange 4. Then place the 2/5 domino form Orange 4 into Blue 10.

The 5/3 domino slots into Blue 10 down into Purple = and the 4/4 domino goes right next to that in Pink =.

Solution

Next up, place the 3/4 domino from Purple = into Pink = and the 2/3 domino from Green = into Purple =. The 4/1 domino goes from Pink = into the final free tile and we wrap the whole thing up with the 2/2 domino in Green =.

The trickiest part about today’s Hard Pips was figuring out what the Pink = group would be. I tried it with 2’s first, only to quickly realize that I’d need those in Orange 4. This made 4’s the only other option, and everything came together easily enough after that. How did you do?

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