Pips Answer for Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Solving today's Pips set felt like a classic Rodolfo Kurchan challenge, starting with a relatively breezy Easy puzzle and scaling up to a Hard one that really made me sweat. On the Easy level, my eyes went straight to the Sum 0 region. Since it only covered two cells, it was a total giveaway that the [0,0] domino belonged there. That left me with the Sum 12 region across three cells. I looked at the [4,4] and [2,4] dominoes and realized that if I placed the [4,4] in the middle and right spots of that sum, I just needed one more 4 for the left spot. The 4 from the [2,4] domino fit perfectly, leaving the 2 to hang out in the empty cell area. Moving to Medium, the big anchor was the Sum 12 region in the center.

I scanned my dominoes for 6s and saw they were on the [2,6] and [6,0] pieces. I had to split them up to get a 6 in each of the sum's cells. Once those were locked in, the 'Greater than 3' constraints were easy to satisfy with the remaining 4 and 6 pips. The Hard puzzle was a different beast entirely. It featured three separate Sum 10 regions. I had to be extremely careful not to waste my [5,5] domino early. I eventually figured out that one Sum 10 was formed by the [5,5] itself, while the others were created by pairing a 6 from one domino with a 4 from another, or two 5s from different pieces. The 'Equals' constraint on the left side was the final piece of the jigsaw, helping me orient the [3,1] and [6,5] dominoes correctly by ensuring their adjacent pips matched.