NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers, And Walkthrough For Friday, December 5

Well, Pipsqueaks, it’s Friday at long last. Huzzah! Just one more push and we’re home free. As always, we have three Pips puzzles to solve courtesy of the New York Times Games section. Let’s not waste any precious time and get right to it!

Looking for Thursday’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:

I suppose this is a pair of P’s — or “PP” for those of us still into potty humor — though I still can guess no rhyme nor reason to the Pips being in the shape of letters and numbers. In any case, this is a much easier Hard Pips than yesterday’s with a very obvious starting point.

Step 1

There’s only one domino with a blank side, and since we have a Dark Blue 0 tile, that’s where it has to go. It can’t go into Pink = because we only have two 2-pips, so it has to go down into Green = instead. That means the 2/3 domino has to go from Green = into the Purple = group. Next, place the 3/3 domino in the middle tiles of Purple = and the 3/4 domino from Purple = into the Pink = group.

Step 2

We’ll place the 3/1 domino from Purple = into Pink < 5 and the 4/4 domino in the remaining Pink = tiles. Next, hop over to the second “P” and place the 6/6 domino in the two right tiles of Purple 24.

Solution

Place the 6/4 domino from Purple 24 down into the first free tile and the 6/1 domino from Purple 24 up into the first Blue = tile. The 1/5 domino slots into Blue = over into Orange ≠ and the 3/5 domino goes from Orange ≠ into the second and final free tile. And that’s a wrap!

I’m willing to bet there’s only one solution to today’s Hard Pips, but I could be wrong.

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