Today’s NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Solution And Walkthrough For Saturday, November 8

Saturday is here at last, and if you’re taking a break from your weekend festivities to lay down some dominoes and need a little help with today’s Pips, you’ve come to the right place. It’s a beautiful autumn day, so let’s get to solving!

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:

This Pips looks kind of like an upside-down bug. Or a koala bear laying on its back with its head turned to the side, the two Pink tiles its ears. That’s a cute image. We’ll go with that. This Hard Pips has a pretty obvious place to start, so let’s get right to it.

Step 1

The koala bear’s ears are where we’ll begin. Based on the dominoes available, the Dark Blue = group will need to be 2’s. Place the 1/2 domino from Pink 1 into Dark Blue = and do the same with the 0/1 domino from Pink 0 into Dark Blue =.

Step 2

This next bit was trickier. I tried using the 2 dominoes horizontally into the next section, but it turned out to be less complicated. Instead, the 2/2 domino goes in the remaining Dark Blue = tiles. The 2/3 domino slots into Orange 0 down into Purple 5. The 3/1 domino goes from the free tile into the second Orange 3 tile, and the 2/6 domino lays flat from Purple 5 into Green =.

Solution

The 6/0 domino can go either way into Blue > 5 and the 6/6 domino finishes up the Green = group. The 1/1 domino finishes this Pips from Purple 1 into the final free tile. All done, easy peasy!

I think these Hard Pips have been weirdly simple lately. A long stretch of not-very-challenging puzzles. This one did slow me down in the middle, but once I’d sorted that out it came together lickity-split. How did you do? Any alternative solutions?

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