Another Tuesday, another Pips to solve. This one was tricky, and even the Medium-tier puzzle gave me a challenge. Medium is often pretty easy, but lately I’ve noticed an uptick in difficulty. Let’s lay some dominoes, shall we?

P.S. Yesterday’s Hard Pips was in the shape of a 6 and today’s Easy Pips is in the shape of a 9. Was this an intentional pairing of numbers? A little joke from the NYT puzzle-setters?

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

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:

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.

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

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

This looks like a little winding garden path to me. Let’s take a stroll.

Step 1

I have to admit, I really struggled with today’s Hard Pips. It’s very different from most of these, because it’s almost entirely a line. There are only a couple points where it isn’t single-file.

To begin, we’ll place the 1/6 domino from Blue <2 into Orange =. The only other domino that would work here is the 0/2 but there’s no 2/2 domino to go below it, so 6 is our only choice. The 6/6 domino finishes out Orange =. Next, place the 6/5 domino into Blue 11 and the 0/2 domino from Blue 11 into Purple =. Finally, the 2/4 domino goes from Purple = into Orange 7.

Step 2

The 3/0 domino goes from Orange 7 into Pink 5, and the 5/2 domino slots up from Pink 5 into Dark Blue =. Next, place the 2/3 domino from Dark Blue = into Pink 11.

Solution

We only have two dominoes left and they’re both doubles. The 4/4 goes into Pink 11 and the 0/0 goes into Purple 0. And that’s a wrap!

I had to try a number of different combinations here before I got this one. I kept getting close and then not having the right pips to make 11, either in Pink 11 or Blue 11. It’s funny how sometimes I burn through these and other times my brain just abandons me entirely. I got there in the end! How did you do?

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