The weekend has come and gone, but our NYT puzzle games aren’t going anywhere. Another Monday on the books and another Pips to solve. I admit, today’s was a bit of a surprise if only because they’ve been pretty difficult lately, and this one was something of an exception. Let’s lay some dominoes, shall we?

Looking for Sunday’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:

I admit, my imagination is probably a little limited when it comes to making each daily Hard Pip into a shape. This one, once again, looks like a spaceship to me. Maybe some kind of Star Wars vessel, the smaller cousin of the Millennium Falcon — the Millennium Sparrow.

Step 1

The only really difficult thing about today’s Hard Pips is knowing where to begin. There aren’t many dominoes or tiles to fill and there really aren’t many tricky conditions to comply with. None of the groups are more than three tiles. After some counting, I decided that the Blue = group (the largest on the board) would have to be 1’s. The 6’s were the only other number that had enough (3) but they’d be needed elsewhere.

So I started with the 6/5 domino from Purple >1 into Pink 10 and then placed the 5/0 domino from Pink 10 over into Orange =. The 0/6 domino slotted into Orange = over to the free tile.

Step 2

Next, I placed the 1/6 domino from Blue = into Dark Blue >4 and the 1/4 domino from Blue = into Green =.

Solution

Finally, the 4/3 domino laid down from Green = into the second free tile and the 1/2 domino went from Blue = into the final free tile, like so:

This was . . . too easy. This is a Medium-tier Pips at best. I didn’t have to restart at all. I only had to think about it for a few seconds — enough time to figure out what I’d need for Blue = — before diving in, and I laid them all out without having to adjust a thing. What gives, NYT? You’ve had such delightfully challenging Pips lately. Are Mondays going to be easy days now or something? C’est la vie.

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