NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers And Walkthrough For Friday, July 17

Today's Pips

Credit: NYT

Looking for help with today’s Easy, Medium and Hard NYT Pips puzzles? Whether you’re after a nudge in the right direction or just want to compare notes, below you’ll find everything you need to solve each of today’s Pips plus a full walkthrough for today’s

At long last, real rain. Heavy downpours. Glorious, torrential skyfall. The clouds have burst asunder and the earth is wet and green. There’s nothing like the smell of petrichor in the morning. When you live in a very dry place, a place prone to wildfires, rain is like mana from heaven. Let’s solve our Pips and listen to the pitter-patter.

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. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

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:

The “do re mi fa sol la ti do” continues in our Hard Pips series. I’ve started to get The Sound Of Music songs stuck in my head thanks to this. While there’s no obvious starting point, it’s clear that the “L” in today’s “SOL” can be solved one of two way (at least) so we’ll leave it be for a minute. The real trick is going to be making all these 10’s when we have a 5 and a 6 tile robbing us of two of our high-count pips. Let’s start in the “O”.

Step 1

Place the 5/0 from Orange 5 into Blue = and the 0/6 from Blue = into Dark Blue 10. The 4/3 goes from Dark Blue 10 up into Pink 5 and the 2/3 domino goes from Pink 5 over into Blue 5. Lastly, place the 2/6 domino from Blue 5 into Purple =.

Step 2

Drop the 6/6 in the remaining Purple = tiles and hop over to the “S.” The 6/5 domino goes from Dark Blue 6 into Green 8 and the 3/0 goes from Green 8 into Pink 2. The 2/4 domino goes above that from Pink 2 into Green 10 and the 6/4 slides into Green 10 over to Orange 10.

Solution

Place the 6/1 domino from Orange 10 up into Purple 7 and the 3/3 domino slides into the remaining Purple 7 tiles. Hop down to the “L” and place the 4/1 domino from Purple 4 down into Pink =. Finally, place the 1/1 domino in the next two Pink = tiles and the 1/2 domino from Pink = over into Blue 2 — and you’re done!

Have a wonderful Friday, Pipsqueaks!

How’d you do on today’s Pips?

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