The NYT’s domino-based game, Pips, disappeared from beta a short while ago and made a grand entrance on the Games page and app this week. We’ve already told you what Pips is, but now I’d like to discuss gameplay and strategy.
Where to play Pips
Pips is available for free on the NYT Games page, as well as in the Games app for subscribers.
Tips for playing
Every day there are three Pips games: easy, medium, and hard. The first time you play, you’re greeted with a little tutorial. Tap a domino to rotate it, then either drag or tap to move it to a place on the game board. The board gives you some rules that you’ll need to follow; the game doesn’t end until you’ve placed all the dominoes and satisfied all the rules.
After solving, the main metric you’re greeted with is the time it took you to solve it. You can choose to display a timer while you’re playing, if you like.
When you start, avoid these things that might trip you up:
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The rules of traditional dominoes do not apply. Adjacent tiles don’t need to be the same number, and you can’t place the end of one tile in a way where it’s touching the middle of another.
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The numbers for each region are a sum, not the value of each square. So if there are two squares with a label that says “2,” that means you can fill each square with a one-dot domino end. Not two two-dot ends.
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All areas where you can place a domino are colored in, even if they don’t have a label. You can’t place a domino where it doesn’t have a spot to sit in, and all such spots will be filled by the time you solve the puzzle.
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Tap “Reference” for a key to the labels if you forget what the symbols mean. This is just a cheat sheet; it doesn’t send you through the whole tutorial.
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Remember the difference between greater than (>) and lesser than (. As my elementary school math teacher told me, the symbol is an alligator mouth that is in the middle of two numbers, and it wants to eat the bigger one. So if the label says “> 3” that means my number, call it X, could go in the sentence “X > 3” and it must be greater than 3 because the alligator wants to eat my number.
How to win (quickly)
I’m still a newcomer to Pips myself, but I made sure to play several games before I wrote this guide. The fan-created pips.io allows unlimited play, so it’s a great way to practice. The NYT has a habit of shutting down fan versions of their games, so fingers crossed this one stays up a little longer. (I learned about it from the r/nytgames subreddit.)
For the tips below, I’m going to refer to each end of a domino (or the space it sits in) as a “square.” Here are the strategies that seem to help me so far:
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Look at the one-square regions first. Sometimes they’ll only have one possible solution, or they’ll narrow down your options.
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Look for shapes that can only work in one position. For example, four squares in a block could mean two dominoes placed vertically or two placed horizontally. But if there is a vertical line with many squares, and just one square outside that line, you know the square outside the line indicates a horizontal domino. This gets you started on getting the right arrangement of dominoes, even if you don’t know exactly what goes where.
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Count the number of identical numbers. For example, if there’s a region labeled with an equals sign, and there are four squares in that region, there needs to be a number that is repeated at least four times in your set of dominoes. So if you have four six-pip squares, that’s a possibility. But if you only have three five-pip squares, you know the number that gets repeated in the equals region isn’t going to be five.
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If there’s a region that sums to a relatively large number, save that for later. There are lots of ways to make 13, but fewer ways to make 2. Work on the smaller parts first.
So far, I’m not finding that I need much clever strategy to solve each day’s puzzles in a minute or two; even the hard ones don’t seem that hard. Yet. If I’ve learned anything from the rollout of new NYT games, it’s that they draw you in with simple puzzles, and then spring the tough ones on you when you let your guard down. If you found any strategies I’ve missed, let me know below.