Today’s NYT Pips Hints And Solutions For Saturday, September 20th

It seems like summer just began, and here we are in its last throes. Monday marks the last day of summer and the first day of fall, and I’m not sure I’m quite ready for the changing of the seasons. But time waits for no man (or woman) and we must march forth. Soon enough, in fact, it will be March 4th, and winter will be dwindling. So it goes, oh my Pipsqueaks. So it goes. Let’s lay down some dominoes.

Looking for Friday’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. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

Today’s Pips Solution

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

Easy

Medium

Difficult

Let’s do a complete walkthrough of today’s Difficult Pips. It starts out like this:

This looks like a dancing goblin to me, so that’s how I’ll refer to today’s Hard Pips going forward. He has a head, a torso, two flailing arms and no legs. I assume they’re out of frame rather than missing entirely.

Step 1

This was a very tricky Pips and I had to clear the board twice before I figured it out. You really have to pay close attention to your domino economy, because there’s no super obvious place to start. Things we know after examining the grid:

• We will need three 6’s to complete Pink 12 and the Blue 9 group next to it. This is because there are no 4’s whatsoever, so Blue 9 cannot be completed using a 5 and a 4. It must be a 6 and a 3. Obviously Pink 12 must be two 6’s. This means we only have one 6 to spare.
• We have a 1 tile and a 3 group, which means we’ll need to use our small pips wisely. This means that the Purple = group has to be 5’s.
• The central Green 0 group obviously has to be 0’s, and since we only have 5 blank domino halves, we need to be very strategic placing them.

I decided to start with Purple = because I knew it had to be all 5’s. Since I had a 6/0 domino out there, I knew that any other domino with a 0 would need to go into green. So I placed the 5/0 from Purple 5 into Green 0, the 5/5 domino above that and the 5/6 domino from Purple = into the free tile. I now knew I had no more 6’s to spare.

Step 2

Now I needed to finish the Green 0 group. The Pink 3 provided both a challenge and a clue. With no spare 0’s left, I knew all three tiles had to be 1’s. So I placed the 1/1 domino first and then the 1/0 domino up into Green 0. I placed the 3/0 domino from Dark Blue 5 into Green 0 and the 2/0 domino from Orange ≠ into Green 0, like so:

Step 3

Now it was time to deploy my 6’s. I placed the 6/0 from Pink 12 into Orange ≠ since I knew I’d need the 6/3 to go into Blue 9. Then I placed the 6/2 domino from Bue 9 into the free tile.

Solution

I only had two dominoes left. I placed the 1/3 domino from Purple 1 into the free tile and the 2/1 domino from Dark Blue 5 into the final free tile, and that made the dancing goblin complete.

Maybe it’s just me, but I found this very tricky. Like I said, I fumbled it a couple times before getting it right. But once I’d really narrowed down the conditions, realizing I absolutely had to place those blank tiles just perfectly, it all fell into place. How did you do?

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