Today’s NYT Pips Hints And Solutions For Thursday, September 11th

The world is going a little bit crazy at the moment. I won’t spell it all out, but the news is . . . grim. Very grim. Very depressing. At least we have our puzzle games to distract ourselves with. Let’s take a crack at today’s Pips.

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

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. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

Today’s Pips Solution

Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Difficult puzzle. Spoilers ahead.

Easy

Medium

Difficult

Let’s do a complete walkthrough of today’s Difficult Pips. It starts out like this:

There are a few important details to consider with today’s Pips. The first is the big Blue = group. That requires six of the same exact number of pips. The second is the Orange 24 group. That can only be completed with 6’s. We also have two tiles that require a 4 and two that require a 5. I determined just by counting dominoes that the Blue = Group was almost certainly 3’s. So I started there, placing the 4/3 domino from Pink 4 into Blue =. Then I placed the 5/3 domino from the Blue 5 tile down into the Green 5 Group and the 2/3 domino from Green 5 into Blue =. I rounded this side off with the 3/3 domino in Blue =, like so:

Now it was time to fill in the Orange 24 group, so I popped the 3/6 into Blue = and Orange 24, then wrapped up the Blue = with a 3/0 domino into Purple 0.

I placed all the 6 pip dominoes next. 6/0 from Orange 24 into Purple 0, 6/1 into the free tile and 6/2 into Dark Blue =, since 2’s were the only thing that could finish that section off.

Next, I placed the 0/1 domino from Purple 0 into Orange 6. The 5/2 domino fit into Orange 6 over into Dark Blue = and the 2/2 domino finished that group off, leaving me with just two dominoes.

This was the easy part. The 4/4 domino went into Purple = and the 5/1 went from Dark Blue 5 into the final free tile. Voila! That’s all, folks!

This was an easier Pips than some of this week’s, mostly because it was a lot easier to tell where to start. Whenever there’s a big group of equal numbers, or a 24 total group, you narrow your options in a very helpful way. It was interesting to see dominoes separated from the main body of the puzzle. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. How did you do?

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