Another day, another Pips puzzle to solve along with my Pipsqueaks. We have dominoes to lay down, tiles to fill, lots of colorful boxes and conditions to satisfy. Let’s dive right in!

Looking for Sunday’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:

At first, I thought maybe this was a little man wearing a cowboy hat or a sombrero. Then, I thought maybe it was a little man in a rice hat. But I’ve decided this is actually Don Quixote being arrested. He’s been tilting at too many windmills and now the police have caught him, like they caught the knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and he’s holding his hands up.

Step 1

It’s not super obvious where to start here, and a bit of domino-counting is required. The only pip with enough tiles to fulfill the Pink = group is 5, so we’ll start there. We also know that Orange 18 has to be all 6’s.

I began by placing the 5/5 domino on the left of the Pink = group (it can’t go anywhere else based on the surrounding tiles) and the 6/6 domino in Don Quixote’s Orange 18 foot.

Step 2

Next, I placed the 6/5 domino from Orange 18 into Pink = and the 2/5 domino from the Blue 2 tile into Pink =. Don Quixote’s arm is a Green 0 group, and we know that it has to consist of the 0/0 domino and the 0/5 domino, spilling over into Pink = like so:

Step 3

Don Quixote’s other arm is a free tile (for the hand) and a Purple 3 group. Based on remaining dominoes, these will need to be all 1’s, but since the free tile is a question mark, I’m not sure what to place here yet. For now, the 1/1 domino will make a good beginning.

Next, we have a Dark Blue = group and a Purple = group. Either of these could be 3 or 4 based on what we have left, but I assume we’ll need the 3/3 domino for the Pink 6 group in Don Quixote’s hat, which would mean we need the 4/4 domino to use in the Purple = group. I placed the 5/3 domino from Pink = up into Dark Blue = and the 3/2 domino from Dark Blue = into Blue 2. Then I placed the 3/4 domino from Dark Blue = into Purple =. We’re getting close now!

Step 4

From here, I placed my remaining two doubles. 3/3 went into Pink 6 and 4/4 went into Purple =. This leaves us with three free tiles in the hat, arm and leg.

Solution

The 4/1 domino goes from Purple = into the free tile. The 1/6 domino goes from Purple 3 into the next free tile. And finally, the 5/4 domino goes from Pink = into the last free tile. And that’s a wrap! Don Quixote is free!

The trickiest part of this Pips was figuring out Don Quixote’s head area. You really always have to look a few steps ahead when planning what to place, gathering clues from the various conditions present on the board. And as I noted yesterday, saving those free tiles for last really helps. How did you do?

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