By Erik Kain,Senior Contributor

Copyright forbes

Today’s Pips
Credit: NYT

Happy autumn, Pipsqueaks! Summer has been vanquished. Fall is here. The days are getting shorter and it’s cooling down dramatically, though that’s been helped by a lot of much-needed rain up here in the desert mountains. I’m not complaining! We have some Pips puzzles to solve, so let’s get right to it!

Looking for Monday’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.

2 tile and placed the 4/0 domino there into the Blue 2 group. Then I placed the 2/3 from Blue 2 into Dark Blue =. Next, I placed the 0/1 domino from the Purple <2 tile into the Green 2 group and the 1/3 domino from Green 2 into Dark Blue =, like so: Today's Pips Screenshot: Erik Kain Half our dominoes are placed now. From here, I slotted the 3/0 domino from Dark Blue = into Pink 2. Then I finished up the Dark Blue = with the 3/3 domino. The 2/1 domino goes in Pink 2 up into Purple 2 and the final 1/6 domino goes from Purple 2 up into the only free tile on the board. And that’s all, folks! Today's Pips Screenshot: Erik Kain Given how tricky some of these Hard Pips can be, I was surprised to get one that felt more like a Medium-tier puzzle today. I guess the NYT puzzle setters were just going easy on us. A little autumnal reprieve, perhaps. 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