Today’s NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Solution And Walkthrough For Sunday, November 9

Sunday has arrived, and so far November remains lovely and autumnal, with no hint of an early winter — though it’s claims like that which summon the frost spirits and usher in the cold weather. Knock on wood. We have a NYT Pips puzzle to solve, and today’s is easily the most challenging I’ve seen in a good long while. I struggled with this one, Pipsqueaks. I really did.

Looking for Saturday’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:

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 < signs, the total of those tiles must be greater or less than the listed number. It varies by grid. Blank spaces can have anything. The various possible conditions are:

• = All pips must equal one another in this group.
• ≠ All pips must not equal one another in this group.
• > The pip in this tile (or tiles) must be greater than the listed number.
• < The pip in this tile must be less than the listed number.
• An exact number (like 6) The pip must equal this exact number.
• Tiles with no conditions can be anything.

In order to win, you have to use up all your dominoes by filling in all the squares, making sure to fit each condition. Sometimes there’s only one way to solve the puzzle. Other times, there can be two or more different solutions. Play today’s Pips puzzle here.

Today’s Pips Solutions And Walkthrough

Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium tier Pips. After that, I’ll walk you through the Hard puzzle. Spoilers ahead.

Today’s Easy Pips

Today’s Medium Pips

Hard Pips Walkthrough And Solution

Here’s today’s Hard Pips:

Today’s Pips is brought to you by the letter “2” apparently. But don’t let the size of the number fool you — this is a real doozy of a Pips puzzle, and I had to start over after one failed start.

My mistake was starting at the bottom of the 2 and filling in the Dark Blue = with 1’s. That would have worked fine, but up at the top there’s a Blue 2 group and all four blank tiles have to go in the Pink 0 group, which means we’ll need 1’s for the Blue 2 tiles.

Step 1

I decided to start with Pink 0 instead. I knew each blank tile would go here, so I could use that to guide me. Since I knew a 1 had to go in Blue 2, and I had no 0/1 domino, I placed the 0/0 domino in the center Pink 0 tiles. Then I placed the 0/5 domino from Pink 0 into the free tile, since there weren’t enough 5’s to go in Orange =. I placed the 0/2 domino from Pink 0 into Orange = like so:

Step 2

Next up, I tackled the Orange = group, placing the 2/1 domino from Orange = into Blue 2 and the 2/3 domino from Orange = into the free tile. The only other Pips we had enough of at this point for Dark Blue = was 6, so I placed the 2/6 domino from Orange = down into Dark Blue = like so:

Step 3

Next, I placed the 5/6 domino from the free tile into Dark Blue = and the 6/6 domino in the remaining two Dark Blue = tiles. The 1/3 domino slotted from Green < 3 into Purple < 4 and the 5/1 domino laid down from Pink > 4 into the next free tile.

Solution

Finally, place the 4/1 domino from Purple = into Blue 2 and the 4/3 domino from Purple = into the final free tile. And that’s a wrap!

This was a much more engaging Pips than we’ve seen in awhile, with some great limitations introduced with the Pink 0 group that really made this a fun head-scratcher to solve. I can’t image there are any alternative solutions, but if you came up with one I’d be curious to see.

Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Be sure to follow me for all your daily puzzle-solving guides, TV show and movie reviews and more here on this blog!