Looking for help with today’s NYT Pips puzzles? You’ve come to the right place. Not only will you find strategies below, but full answers for each daily trio of Pips puzzles and a full walkthrough for the Hard Pips.

It’s the final day of August, Pipsqueaks, and then it’s September. And in less than three weeks, autumn will be here. What a bittersweet thought. I come to the end of every summer, happy for cooler days and also frustrated that I didn’t spend as much time outside in nature as I should have. At least this year I’ve been biking a lot. Early, sunrise bike rides to hot yoga or the gym have become my happy place. I am a changed man. But I still plug away at these blasted Pips puzzles every day! Let’s solve this one.

Looking for Sunday ’ s Pips? Read our guide right here.

In Pips, you have a grid of multi=-colored 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 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.

Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

This is a very tricky Hard Pips and I had to really trial and error the crap out of it before I got everything to work. The cluster of doubles in the top right corner was just not something I expected, so it was many turnings of the proverbial Rubik’s Cube before I got this one right. But there is a clear starting point, and that’s the bottom right corner, where the 5 has to go down (there is no 5/6 domino) and has to pair with something that has a double. The only one I could find was 5/1.

Drop the 5/1 domino form Dark Blue 5 into Pink = and the 1/1 domino next to that in the next two Pink = tiles. The 6/6 goes above in Blue 12 and the 4/6 goes from Pink 4 into Purple 12. Finish off this step with the 6/3 domino up into Green =. 3’s are the only pips we have that complete this group since we need our 2’s for the Purple 2 tiles.

Place the 0/3 domino from Dark Blue 0 into Green 3 and the 2/6 domino from Purple 2 into Pink 10. The 4/3 domino goes from Pink 10 down into Green = and the 3/3 domino fills in the last two Green = tiles. Pop the 5/5 domino above in Blue 10.

The 2/2 domino fills in Orange = and then we hop to the bottom and place the 2/4 domino from Purple 2 into Green =. The 4/5 domino goes from Green = into Orange 8 and the 3/2 domino wraps things up from Orange 8 into the one and only free tile. And that’s a wrap!

Have a marvelous Monday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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