NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Solution And Walkthrough For Tuesday, November 18

Another day, another Pips puzzle to solve. Well, I suppose we actually have three to solve: Easy, Medium and Hard. I’m still waiting for the New York Times Games department to add a Mega Super-Duper-Extra Challenging tier. A boy can dream.

In any case, the numbers just keep coming, with no discernible order, in nearly every Hard Pips we’ve had over the past week-and-a-half. Today’s Hard Pips is the number 9. If I hadn’t already lost track of these by now, I might have the full string of numbers since two Saturdays ago. Oh well! I was hoping it would be the numbers from Lost but that does not seem to be the case. Right then, let’s solve these Pips puzzles, my Pipsqueaks!

Looking for Monday’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 was looking at some other Pips guides out there, and not to toot my own horn (he said, about to toot his own horn) but I haven’t seen any others that actually do walkthroughs of each daily Hard Pips. I also haven’t seen anyone theorizing about this whole mysterious number code. Clearly, you are in good hands even if I do refer to you fine puzzle-solvers as Pipsqueaks from time to time. Anyways, I digress.

Step 1

Normally I might start down at the Purple = group since I know it has to be a double. That’s where I would have started if I only had one double. However, we have three doubles: 2/2, 3/3 and a 5/5. I strongly suspected the 5/5 would go here based on the five different 9 groups and the Pink 3 tile, but I wasn’t sure. Instead, I started with the 3/3 domino in the upper left corner, going from Purple 9 into Pink 3.

The trick going into Step 2, I realized, was preserving as many small-pip dominoes as possible because we need to make Dark Blue 9 out of five tiles and we have no blanks at all. In any case, I used the 6/5 domino from Purple 9 down into Orange 9 and plopped the 5/2 domino into the top two tiles of Blue 9.

Step 2

The reason I wanted the 5/2 domino there is I had a 2/1 domino which I could place in the remaining Blue 9 tile, sending the 1-pip side down into Dark Blue 9. Then I placed the 4/2 domino from Orange 9 into Dark Blue 9 and the 2/2 domino in the next two Dark Blue 9 tiles.

Solution

Next, place the 2/6 domino from Dark Blue 9 into Green 9 and the 3/4 domino from Green 9 into the one and only free tile. The 5/5 domino goes exactly where I thought it would, in Purple = like so:

A clever Pips. It’s the number 9 and almost every group is a 9, though a 9 with double-wide lanes would have been a lot harder!

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

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