It's not only Friday, it's the first day of spring! Happy springtime! Goodbye winter. In three months, summer will be upon us, though it already feels like summer here in the mountains. In any case, we have our last Pips of the work week -- and first Pips of spring -- to solve. Let's get right to it!
Looking for Thursday'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. Sometimes there's only one way to solve the puzzle. Other times, there can be two or more different solutions.
Today's Pips Solutions And Walkthrough
Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I'll walk you through the Hard puzzle. Spoilers ahead.
Today's Easy Pips
Today's Medium Pips
Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution
Here's today's Hard Pips:
Today's Hard Pips is literally a 6 Pips half of a domino. There are six squares (aka Pips) and a bunch of 6 groups to fill in, plus two = groups. My strategy here was to get rid of the 6’s first.
Step 1
Start with the 6/2 domino from the Blue 6 tile in the bottom left square into the Pink 6 group. Finish this square off with the 2/2 domino. Move to the bottom right square and place the 1/6 domino from Orange 6 into Dark Blue 6 and the 5/6 domino from Orange 6 into Green 6 tile.
Step 2
There’s one more 6 tile up in the top right box, so place the 6/0 domino here into Purple = and the 0/0 domino in the remaining Purple = tiles. Move to the center box and place the 3/1 and the 1/1 domino in any order.
Solution
Move to the center left box and place the 2/5 domino from Dark Blue 6 into Green = and the 4/5 domino from Dark Blue 6 into Green = which gets rid of most of our high dominos. Finally, go to the top right box and place the 5/1 domino into Blue 6 and the 3/3 domino into Orange 6 -- or you can do it the other way around.
This was yet another surprisingly simple Hard Pips. Maybe not as easy as yesterday's, but pretty close.
How'd you do on today's Pips? Let me know!
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