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Ah, sweet sweet rain is falling outside as I type this. We’ve had generous monsoons this year, thank the rain gods, and I love everything about the rain. The sound, the smell, the way it makes every color pop, especially green. It’s not so bad, sitting here listening to the raindrops fall while solving these NYT Pips puzzles.

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

How To Play Pips

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.

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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.

Today’s Easy Pips

Today’s Medium Pips

Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

Another of these funky vertical-ish grids with some white space in the center and zero free tiles. I like to try to tackle the big = groups if I can and since we have a Green 1 tile in the bottom left corner, and lots and lots of blanks, we’ll start there today.

Step 1

Place the 1/0 domino from Green 1 up into Pink = and the 0/0 domino directly above that. The 0/4 domino goes from Pink = down into Orange 10 and the 6/2 goes from Orange 10 over into Purple 2. Finish this step with the 3/6 domino from Pink 3 over into Dark Blue 9.

Step 2

Place the 3/0 domino from Dark Blue 9 up into Blue 0 and the 5/3 domino from Pink 5 into Purple =. The 3/3 domino goes above that from Purple = over into Orange 3. Now, place the 6/6 domino in the bottom tiles of Green 17 and the 5/0 domino from Green 17 up into Orange 0.

Solution

Drop the 0/6 domino from Orange 0 down into Dark Blue 17 and the 5/5 domino in the remaining Dark Blue 16 tiles. The 2/3 domino goes above that from Pink 2 into Blue 3 and the 1/5 domino fills in the Purple 5 tiles. Wrap this Pips up with the 0/2 domino from Pink = over into Blue 2 and you’re all done!

Have a tempestuous Tuesday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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