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It’s time to tackle another set of Pips puzzles, and today, even the Easy Pips presented its own challenges. As expected, the Hard Pips brings yet another letter from the alphabet into play. Let’s dive in and see how our dominoes line up.
If you’re still pondering over Wednesday’s Pips, be sure to check out our comprehensive guide here.
How To Play Pips
Pips involves a grid filled with multicolored boxes, each representing a unique “condition” that you need to fulfill. You’re given a specific number of dominoes to complete the grid, and success requires using each domino correctly to meet every condition. The puzzles come in Easy, Medium, and Difficult levels.
Consider this example of a challenging Pips puzzle:
Explore Puzzles & Games on Forbes
In this grid, you’ll notice symbols and numbers associated with each color. For instance, on the far left, three purple squares must not be equal to one another, indicated by the crossed-out equal sign. The adjacent pink squares need to sum to zero. Meanwhile, the zig-zagging blue squares must all match each other. To solve the puzzle, you’ll 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. 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
Easy Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Today’s Medium Pips
Medium Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution
Here’s today’s Hard Pips:
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Today’s Hard Pips is brought to you by the letter “V” as in “vacation” and “vivacious” and “A vault of very voluminous volumes, bound in violet vellum. Oh to voyage vicariously into voids of vibrant verisimilitude!”
The big clues in this Hard Pips are: The Green 11 group will require the one 6 pip we have in our collection of 12 dominoes. It will also require one of our 5’s. The other 5 will need to go in Blue > 4. The 5/0 or the 5/3 could go there, but we need to be careful with 0’s sine we know that between Orange 0 and Blue 0 we’ll use three of the four 0’s and we’ll need another for the two tiles of Purple 1. So we pretty much have to use 5/3 on the top right.
Step 1
Place the 5/3 domino from Blue > 4 into Pink = and the /43 domino directly below that, from Green > 3 into the Pink = group. We can place the 3/3 domino from Pink = into Dark Blue ≠ and then go ahead and place the 6/4 domino from Green 11 into Dark Blue ≠, like so:
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Step 2
When we have ≠ groups, I often find that doubles work really well. We’ve already used the 3/3 this way, but now add the 1/1 from Purple 1 into Dark Blue ≠ and the 0/0 from Blue 0 into Dark Blue ≠. Now, place the 5/0 domino from Green 11 into Orange 0 and the 0/1 domino from Orange = into the Purple 1 tile.
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Solution
Next place the 4/4 domino in the bottom two Dark Blue = tiles and the 4/0 up from Dark Blue = into Purple 1. The 2/1 domino goes from Orange > 1 up into Purple 1. Wrap things up by placing the 3/4 domino from Dark Blue ≠ into the singel free tile. And that’s all, foks!
Hard Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain
I got a bit mixed up today a few times and had to rearrange a couple dominoes to figure this one out, but I got there eventually. Again, I’d be surprised if anyone was able to find a different solution. Did you?
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