If you hoped for another New York Times game to satisfy your breathtaking itching, I’m sorry to disappoint you. PIPS, the latest addition to the growing games of the New York Times, is an exercise without word and endowed with entertainment and occasional frustration.
PIPS, which was launched on Monday, August 18) online and iOS and Android, is a gap compared to the heavy of the global phenomenon and its games, connections and cousin shutters (as well as competitors like Quordle). He has no letters, no words of words or even associations focused on the subject.
The only playing pieces on the tiny Pip game tray are five dominoes. Yes, just like the dominoes with which you played when I was a child, or always use in real life with games like tiles (no, not the same thing as the “nyt” tiles “game). By the way, the pips are the points on a domino.
What is the interest of pips?
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The object of the game is to place all your dominoes on the table by meeting certain on -board requirements. These are defined via color coding, which indicates which tiles are included in a condition, and small labels that define the condition (often a value) of dominoes that you can drop into one or more squares.
As you may remember, dominoes have values that go from zero (white) to six pips. Each domino can have incompatible numbers or corresponding figures. These are these figures and combos to which you will have to pay particular attention when you try to determine each PIPS logical puzzle.
This is the first game of the New York Times that we remember lately which allows three levels of play per day – easy, medium and hard – and that allows you to play them all the same day. As soon as you start playing, a timer begins.
Play pips
On the game board, you will see labels like “> 3” (“greater than three”), “<13" for ("less than 13") or "=" (indicating that all the squares have the same number). In each case, pips on the tiles must fulfill these conditions, individually or collectively.
The satisfaction of these conditions requires a non -linear reflection. Conditional colors on several squares of tiles do not necessarily mean that you will use the two squares on a domino to fulfill these conditions.
Sometimes you need to look for a condition or a pair of conditions that can only be satisfied by one of the five tiles that have been given to you.
I started with the easy game and I resolved it in 31 seconds. I feel rather well in my skin, I went hard and I found myself in difficulties for almost 10 minutes. Medium took me almost six minutes. Now, at least, I think I understand how to play the game and I hope I will do better tomorrow.
Sharing your pips
As with all other New York Times games, you can share your score with friends. The shares show the game number pips, the level of play, a color code which, I suppose, reflects your performance and your time. For 31 seconds, I had a green point. For 5:56, I had a yellow, and for 9:26 am, I had a red point.
Pips certainly work a mental muscle different from that on board, but overall, it feels less succinct and perhaps a little less fun. There is a glorious combination of scholarship and simplicity in Bordle that I cherish. As a writer, I like puns like this, including connections and strands. I also think that gamification, results and competitions resulting from games like Wordle are more universally relatable.
I don’t even know how you would write the daily guide for PIPs. The level of complexity and thinking could make every daily life read a slog 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 certain measure of our intelligence, and whether it is true or not, we like to immerse ourselves on each other when we get a lot in two or even a single essay.
There is no obvious equivalent of pips of “GOT it in 2!” And for this reason, it is not a lot, but it could well be ok.
