Pips Answer for Friday, September 5, 2025

When I first sat down with the September 5th puzzles, I started with the Easy grid to get my brain moving. I immediately looked for the 'empty' and single-cell sum regions because those give you the pips for those spots right away. In the Easy puzzle, I saw that the cell at [2,2] had to be empty, and I used the dominoes like [3,3] and [5,3] to satisfy the 'equals' region in the middle row. It felt like a quick warm-up. Moving on to the Medium, the regions got a bit more crowded. I focused on the large 'equals' region spanning across the bottom-middle. I knew that the values in those four cells had to match, which really limited which dominoes I could place.

I looked at the sum of 6 at the bottom and realized I only had a few combinations from the available dominoes, like [2,2] or [4,2], that could fit there without breaking the rest of the board. The Hard puzzle by Rodolfo Kurchan was the real challenge. With 15 dominoes and a 10-row layout, I had to be very methodical. I started at the bottom with the sum of 18; that almost certainly required the [6,6] and parts of other high-value dominoes. Then I jumped to the sum of 0 at the bottom-left, which is a gift because it has to be blank spaces or zeros. I spent most of my time balancing the long 'equals' chains. I found that if I placed a domino incorrectly in the middle, the error would cascade all the way to the top. I used a 'process of elimination' strategy, crossing off dominoes as I placed them to ensure I didn't double-count any of the pips.