If you expected another New York Times game to satisfy your spop of revolting, I regret disappointing you. PIPS, the latest incorporation into the New York Times Growth Games Corral is an occasional entertainment and frustration exercise without words and full of dominoes.
Pips, which was launched on Monday (August 18) online and iOS and Android, is a deviation from the Wordle Global Phenomenon and its Primo, Connections and Thread Games (as well as competitors such as Quordle). It has no letters, nor jumble of words, or even associations promoted by the subject.
The only game pieces on the small pip game board are five dominoes. Yes, like the dominoes with which you played when I was a child, or you are still using real life with games like the tiles (no, not the same as the “tile” game of Nyt). Pips, by the way, are the points in a domino.
What is the point of the Pips?
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The objective of the game is to place all its fomino on the board meeting certain requirements on board. These are established through colored coding, which indicates which mosaics are included in a condition, and small labels that define the condition (often a value) of domino, can drop into one or more squares.
As you will remember, the dominoes have values ranging from zero (blank) to six pip. Each domino can have non -coincident numbers or coincident figures. It is these numbers and combos to which you will need to pay close attention while trying to solve each pip logic puzzles.
This is the first game of the New York Times that we can remember in recent times that allows three levels of game per day, easy, medium and hard, and that allows you to play them the same day. As soon as you start playing, a timer starts.
Playing pips
On the game board, you will see labels like “> 3” (“more than three”), “<13" for ("less than 13") or "=" (indicating that all squares have the same number). In each case, the PIP in the tiles have to meet these conditions, whether individually or collectively.
Satisfying these conditions requires non -linear thought. The conditional colors in multiple squares of tiles do not necessarily mean that they will use both squares in a domino to meet those conditions.
Sometimes you should look for a condition or a couple of conditions that can only be satisfied by one of the five chips that have given you.
I started with the easy game and solved it in 31 seconds. I felt quite well with myself, changed hard and found myself fighting for almost 10 minutes. Medium took me almost six minutes. Now, at least, I think I understand how to play and I hope you do better tomorrow.
Sharing your pips
As with all other New York Times games, you can share your score with friends. The actions show the PIPS game number, the level of play, a color code that I suppose reflects its performance and time. For 31 seconds, I obtained a green point. By 5:56, I obtained a yellow, and by 9:26, I obtained a red point.
Pips certainly works a different mental muscle from Wordle, but in general, it feels less succinct and perhaps a little less fun. There is a glorious combination of scholarship and simplicity with the wool I appreciate. As a writer, I love words games like this, including connections and threads. I also believe that gamification, the results and competitions that result from games like Wordle are more universally identifiable.
I am not even sure how you would write the daily guide for PIP. The level of complexity and thought could make each newspaper read a job or worse, very frustrating.
We all use words every day to communicate. We have the feeling that our ability to the English language is a measure of our intelligence, and if that is true or not, we love to immerse each other when we have in two or even an attempt.
There are no equivalent obvious pip of “Got it in 2!” And for that reason, this is not Wordle, but that could be fine.
