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.

Happy Saturday, Pipsqueaks! I hope you have a lovely weekend. It’s the last weekend of August, but we still have a few weeks before summer is officially over and autumn falls into our lap. Let’s grab some dominoes and get to solving.

Looking for Friday ’ 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:

Once again, today’s Hard Pips gives us some guiding tiles to help us at least guess at a good starting point. I like maximums and minimums. For instance, We have two 12 pairs which require our 6’s. We have a few 0 pairs as well, which require our blanks, and an Orange 10 which will almost certainly require 5’s with all those 6’s gone. Our two = groups could be 1’s or 3’s as both have doubles. This realistically requires some trial and error, as it’s not entirely cut and dry, so here’s where to begin.

Place the 0/0 domino in the Pink 0 group in the bottom left corner and the 6/0 domino above that, from Purple 12 into Orange 0. Place the 2/1 domino next to that from Blue 6 into Purple = and the 6/3 domino below that, from Purple 12 down into Blue =. The 3/3 domino fills out Blue =.

Move up and place the 0/2 domino from Orange 0 into Blue 6 and the 1/1 domino in the adjacent Purple = tiles. We have a couple free tiles over here and I prefer coming back to those later, so hop to the top right and place the 1/0 domino from Purple = into Pink 0 and the 0/4 domino from Pink 0 into Dark Blue > 2.

The 6/6 domino fills Green 12 and the 5/2 domino goes below that, from Orange 10 down into Dark Blue > 1. Place the 5/1 domino from Orange 10 down into the first free tile. Next, place the 3/2 domino from the middle left free tile into Blue 2 and the 3/1 domino from the third and final free tile into Purple = and you’re done!

Have a splendid Saturday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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