NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers, And Walkthrough, Saturday November 22

The weekend is finally here and it’s a rather chilly one. The ski hill has opened up here in the mountains of Arizona thanks to some serious snowfall, with more to come over the weekend. I mean, just look at this:

I bet that’s not what you picture when you think of Arizona! In any case, we have some Pips puzzles to solve, so let’s bundle up, grab a hot cocoa, and get to work!

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:

Obviously, today’s Hard Pips is the number 14, which is no surprise given we’ve had almost entirely number-shaped Hard Pips for two weeks now. I wonder how high they’ll take this over at The New York Times. 99 perhaps? I’ve got 99 problems and a Pips ain’t one. Okay, let’s get started.

Step 1

Admittedly, there wasn’t a super obvious place to start, but based on the dominoes in our collection today, I figured 5’s would make sense for the Dark Blue = group. I tested this theory by seeing if we had a 1/5 and a 4/5 domino and we did, so I plugged those into Orange 1 and Green 4 respectively.

Step 2

Next, I placed the 5/2 domino from Dark Blue = into Purple = and the 1/2 domino from Dark Blue 1 up into Purple = finishing that group off. I wrapped up Dark Blue = with the 5/1 domino down into the free tile, and plugged the 1/3 domino from the Purple 1 tile over into the second free tile.

Step 3

At this point, we have four double dominoes remaining, and we’ll need both our larger sets for the two 14 groups. I placed the 5/5 domino in Pink 14 and the 4/4 domino from Pink 14 into the Blue 4 tile.

Solution

Next, I placed the 6/6 domino into the top Blue 14 tiles and the 2/3 domino from Blue 14 into the final free tile. I wrapped things up with the 1/1 domino in Orange = and that was that.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have to adjust at all today. No backtracking. Everything just sort of came together exactly how it needed to which was pretty nice. Did you find any alternate way to solve today’s Pips?

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