Today’s NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Solution And Walkthrough For Thursday, November 13

The week is flying by, and so is the month of November. We hit the halfway mark this Saturday. It’ll be Thanksgiving before you know it! As always, we have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips puzzle to solve today.

Looking for Wednesday’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:

Normally I might say this was a dog sitting down and being a very good boy. But given the string of number-shaped Pips we’ve had lately, I think this is the number “1.” See below for more on this observation.

Step 1

The obvious place to start with today’s Pips is in the Orange < 1 group, which has to have two blank tiles to work. We only have two dominoes with blank tiles, and it’s pretty clear where they go. The 0/6 domino goes from Orange < 1 into Dark Blue 18, which will require three 6’s. The 0/4 therefore must go next to it up into Blue = with the 4/2 domino next to that going over into Purple 3.

Step 2

The 6/4 domino slots into Dark Blue 18 up into Pink 10 and the 1/6 domino will go above that from Purple 3 into Pink 10. Next, place the 6/3 domino from Dark Blue 18 into Green 6 and the 3/3 domino from Green 6 down into Pink ≠ like so:

Solution

I realized at this point that the 3/3 domino and everything after were all doubles. The 2/2 domino goes from the Purple < 3 tile into Pink ≠ and the 1/1 domino slots into the Orange 1 tile into the final Pink ≠ tile. That leaves us with the 5/5 domino which wraps things up in the Blue 10 group. No free tiles today.

So here’s the pattern of numbers I’ve observed since this weekend:

Now we have a “1” which gives us 0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1 — is there a pattern? What does it mean?

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

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