Hints, Answers and Walkthrough for Wednesday, April 8th

Another day, another trio of Pips puzzles to solve. These are very tricky, or at least both medium and hard were headscratchers. In fact, I think Medium gave me more trouble than Hard today, although I was a little distracted by it all. . . Current affairs are being discussed. In any case, ignore. Just grab a domino or twenty and let’s solve these pips!

looking for tuesday‘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. To win you have to use every domino and get every position right. There are easy, medium and hard levels.

Here is an example of hard level pips:

As you can see, the grid has a bunch of symbols and numbers with each color. On the leftmost side, the three purple squares should not be equal to each other (so the equal sign is crossed out). The sum of the two pink squares next to it should be equal to 0. The total sum of the zig-zagging blue squares must be equal to each other. You click on the dominoes to rotate them, and this will be required as they have to be rotated to fit where they are.

Other conditions are not shown on this grid, such as “less than” or “greater than”. If there are multiple tiles with > or < signs, the total of those tiles must be more or less than the number listed. This varies according to the grid. Anything can happen in empty space. There are different possible situations:

• = All pips in this group must be equal to each other.
• ≠ All pips in this group should not be equal to each other.
• >The pipes in this tile (or tiles) must be greater than the number listed.
• An exact number (e.g. 6) The pip must be equal to this exact number.
• Tiles with no conditions can be anything.

To win, you have to use all your dominoes by filling in all the squares, making sure they fit in each position. Sometimes there is only one way to solve a puzzle. Other times, there may be two or more different solutions. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

Today’s Pips Solutions and Walkthrough

Solutions for easy and medium level pips are given below. After that, I will tell you about the difficult puzzle. Spoilers ahead.

today’s easy pips

today’s medium pips

Hard Pips Walkthrough and Solutions

Here are today’s Hard Pips:

Today’s Hard Pips is a rook – the “castle” piece of chess, and a real straight-shooter. It’s not entirely clear where to start, but being 3rd up in the fight is a safe bet. We also know that the pink = group, which consists of five tiles, needs 4.

step 1

Start with 3/6 dominoes from the purple 3 tile to the blue 11 and beyond that to the 5/5 tile, from the blue 11 to the orange 10. The 3/1 domino goes from pink=3 to green= and the 1/0 domino goes from green= to dark blue=.

step 2

Next, place the 0/5 domino from dark blue to purple 5 and the 0/4 domino from dark blue to pink 4. The 0/6 domino goes from dark blue to blue 11 and the 4/1 domino slides from pink down to orange=.

step 3

Place the 4/4 domino into the next two pink= tiles and the 1/1 domino into the remaining orange= tiles. The 5/4 Domino Purple moves down to 9 and the 5/1 Domino Blue moves down from 11 to Dark Blue 6.

Solution

Next, place 5/3 dominoes from the dark blue 6 to the green = and 2/3 dominoes from the blue = to the green =. The 4/2 domino goes from pink= to blue= and we wrap things up with a 2/5 domino from the single free tile down to the orange 10 on top.

To be honest it wasn’t too bad, although I got a little stuck in the Orange=/Purple 9 territory, trying first with the 2 in the Orange= and also trying to bridge the Purple 9 to the other groups, when a simple 5/4 domino did the trick. However, changing things a bit cleared up everything.

How did you do on today’s pips? tell me!

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