By Erik Kain,Senior Contributor

Copyright forbes

Today’s Pips
Credit: NYT

It’s the last full day of summer, Pipsqueaks, so make the most of it. Tomorrow at 11:19 am PT / 2:19 pm ET we take summer out back and put it down. Fall rises. Regime change in the cyclical war of the seasons. That means you have just one more summer Pips to solve. Let’s get to it!

Looking for Saturday’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:

Pips example
Screenshot: Erik Kain

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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 The pip in this tile (or tiles) must be greater than the listed number.

We also have a big Pink ≠ group in the middle and that Dark Blue 18 that we know requires all 6’s. We’ll start by placing the 5/5 domino in Blue 10, the 4/4 domino in Purple = and the 0/0 domino in the Green 0 group. Based on the remaining 6’s, I know one will need to go in Pink ≠ down into Green 0 and one will need to go in Pink 1 up into Dark Blue 18. That leaves us with the 3/6 which I’m guessing will work for the left-side Green 3 tile and Orange >4 tile. Like so:

Today’s Pips
Screenshot: Erik Kain

Next, we’ll place the 1/6 domino from Pink 1 into Dark Blue 18 and the 6/6 domino in the remaining Dark Blue 18 squares. We have a Purple 4, so we’ll place the 4/3 domino there up into Pink ≠. There’s a Pink 3 that we can use the 3/1 on dropping down into Purple <4. Today's Pips Screenshot: Erik Kain That leaves us with just four more dominoes. The 1/2 slots into Orange 1 down into Pink ≠. We’ll do the same with the 5/4 domino from Blue 5 into Pink ≠. Finally, the 0/6 domino goes where I noted earlier, in the Green 0 tile up into Pink ≠ group, leaving us with a 2/5 domino that slots into Dark Blue 2 up into Pink ≠. And that’s a wrap! Today's Pips Screenshot: Erik Kain This is another one of those Pips where I wasn’t 100% sure I was on the right track at first and just kind of made some educated guesses to get started. I had to juggle things once or twice when I played, but it was easy enough in the end. A fun one—not too hard, not too difficult. How did you do? Be sure to follow me for all your daily puzzle-solving guides, TV show and movie reviews and more here on this blog! Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions