Today’s NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Solution And Walkthrough For Saturday, November 15

The weekend is here at long last and we have yet another Hard Pips to solve that’s shaped like a number. This has become very common over the past week or so. This is another “4” though the last one we had was an Easy Pips, and this is considerably more challenging. In any case, we have weekend stuff to do like go out on the town or . . . chores and whatnot. Always chores. But first, let’s solve this Pips!

Looking for Friday’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:

Twelve dominoes and one chunky 4-shaped Pips to solve. There’s an obvious place to start, thankfully, given that the Orange 0 group requires three blank dominoes and we have just three.

Step 1

First, place the 0/0 domino on the bottom two Orange 0 tiles and then the 0/4 domino from Orange 0 up into Purple = group. Theoretically it could also go over into the free tile, but this seems unlikely given the dominoes remaining.

Step 2

Place the 4/4 domino in the remaining Purple = tiles and then we can turn our attention to the Green 4 group. We know this has to use all four of our dominoes containing 1’s since we have no more blank dominoes left.

Place the 1/5 domino from the upper right Green 4 tile into the Dark Blue 10 group. The 1/4 domino goes from Green 4 into Pink =- and the 1/2 domino goes right below that into Blue =. At this point, we could place the final 1 domino, but I didn’t when I was playing just in case I had one of the others wrong.

Step 3

Place the 6/6 domino in the top two tiles of the upper right Blue = group and the 5/6 domino below that from Dark Blue 10 into the final Blue = tile.

Solution

The 2/4 domino goes from Purple 2 into Pink 4 and the 3/4 domino goes below that from Orange = into the final Pink = tile. The 3/2 domino goes from Orange = down into the last Blue = spot. Now you can pop that 3/1 domino from the free tile into the last Green 4 tile and you’re done!

I’ve given up finding meaning in these Pips numbers. If it is some kind of elaborate code, it’s one I will not solve. This was definitely a more challenging Pips than the last two and I had to redo my work a couple of times, though that’s partly because I tried starting at the Purple 2 tile before I realized I only had three blank dominoes available. Starting in Orange 0 made all the difference.

How did you do on today’s Pips? Did anyone find a different solution?

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