NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Tuesday, June 16

How To Play Pips

In Pips, you have a grid of multicolored 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.

Today’s Easy Pips

Today’s Medium Pips

Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

Today’s Hard Pips is the word “TWO” and there are, indeed, many 2-tiles on the grid. 2 and >2 and < 2 and even a 22 group. There’s no obvious place to begin, to be honest, though we can guess that several of our 6’s will be used in the 22 group. Three 6’s + a 4 should do the trick, so we’ll begin there.

Step 1

Place the 2/4 domino from Dark Blue 2 into Pink 22 and the 6/6 domino next to that. Next, move up to the “T” and place the 1/0 from Pink < 2 into Purple = and the 0/0 domino in the next two Purple = tiles. The 0/2 domino goes from Purple = into Blue 2.

Step 2

Move back to the “0” and place the 6/0 domino from Pink 22 into Purple < 2 and the 2/2 domino in the Pink = group. Hop over to the “W” and place the 2/5 domino from Purple 2 into Orange =. Next, place the 5/1 domino from Green > 2 into Blue = and the 2/1 domino from Green 2 into Blue =.

Solution

Place the 4/1 domino from Orange = into Blue = and the 4/0 from Orange = into the first free tile. Place the 5/3 domino from Orange = on the other side of the “W” into the second free tile and the 2/6 domino from Dark Blue 2 into the third free tile. Finally, place the 3/0 domino from the last free tile (in the “T”) into Purple = and you’re done.

Have a great Tuesday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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