It’s another Saturday, which means it’s time for another Pips puzzle. While weekends might be a chance to relax, for me, tackling a new Pips challenge is a daily ritual, regardless of the weather or circumstances. Let’s dive into today’s puzzle and lay down some dominoes!
Missed Friday’s Pips? Check out our detailed guide right here.
How To Play Pips
Pips features a grid composed of multicolored sections, each representing a unique “condition” you must fulfill. Your task is to strategically place a limited number of dominoes to complete the grid. Using all dominoes and meeting every condition is essential for victory. The game offers Easy, Medium, and Difficult levels of play.
Here’s a glimpse into a challenging Pips puzzle:
Notice how the grid contains various symbols and numbers within colored sections. For instance, the three purple squares on the left must not match each other (as indicated by a crossed-out equal sign). Adjacent pink squares need to sum to zero. Meanwhile, the zigzagging blue squares must all hold the same value. You can rotate dominoes by clicking on them, which is essential to ensure they fit correctly.
Additional conditions, like “less than” or “greater than,” may not be visible on this grid. When multiple tiles feature > or < signs, the sum must either exceed or fall below the indicated number. These conditions differ from grid to grid. Blank spaces can accommodate any value. The range of possible conditions includes:
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 Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Today’s Medium Pips
Today’s Medium Pips is as tricky as many Hard Pips, so I’ll do a quick walkthrough. Here’s what it looks like blank:
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Step 1
While there’s no obvious starting point here, you definitely don’t want to start on the little secondary area with the Purple >4 tile. That’s too open-ended. A better place to start is on the right side where we have an Orange 0 group. We know every tile in that group has to be blank. Still, we’ll start below that with the 1/6 domino going from Purple 2 into the free tile and the 1/4 domino going from Purple 2 into Green 10. Next, the 0/0 domino goes into the right side of Orange 0 and the 0/6 domino slots down from Orange 0 into Green 10.
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Step 2
The 5/5 domino goes in the 2 Blue 10 boxes. Next, the 2/4 domino lays across Pink <4 into Dark Blue 10 and the 6/3 domino goes from Dark Blue 10 into Pink =. The 3/1 domino goes from Pink = into the free tile, and then we can lay down the 6/6 domino in Blue 12 and the 3/3 domino in Pink =.
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Solution
All we have left is the 4/4 domino—which goes into the top two free tiles—and the 5/2 domino—which we can place in Purple >4 over into the final free tile—and we’re done. This definitely felt more like an easier Hard Pips than a Medium Pips.
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Today’s Hard Pips
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Once again, I have no shape to make from this Pips. It’s pretty abstract. You could almost make it a man wearing a hat, but not quite.
Step 1
The best place to start today are the two Pink groups. Pink 8 has to be 4/4, which leaves us with 6/6 for the bottom Pink = group.
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Step 2
We know the Blue 29 group needs to be mostly 6’s with one 5 in the mix. Start by placing the 6/4 domino from Blue 29 into Green >3 and the 6/1 domino from Blue 29 into Dark Blue 3. Next, the 6/5 domino can go either direction in the top right tiles of Blue 29 and the 6/2 domino goes up from Blue 29 into Purple ≠. This is important, because we need five different pips to fill Purple ≠ so placement here really matters. You’ll want to use the 6/2 because we need the other 2’s for later.
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Step 3
The 4/2 domino goes from the left free tile up into Dark Blue 3. The 1/0 domino goes from the next free tile up into Purple 7. The 5/2 domino can go either direction in the remaining two tiles of Purple 7.
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Solution
This leaves us with two more dominoes to lay down. You can place the 5/0 and 4/1 domino wherever in the final Purple ≠ group, but this is how I did it:
Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
A reasonably challenging puzzle simply because there were a lot of spots you could place dominoes that would then leave you with too many of one pips or another in the final Purple ≠ group. Still, I wouldn’t call this much trickier than today’s Medium Pips! How did you do?
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