NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers, And Walkthrough For Wednesday, December 3

Wednesday puts us smackdab in the middle of the very first week of December. If you’re counting down the days to Christmas (or the next batch of Stranger Things 5 episodes), we have just 22 to go — three weeks, basically. Then one more before the new year! Let’s solve today’s very tricky Pips, shall we? Both the Medium and Hard were quite a challenge.

Looking for Tuesday’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 the letter “X” — or a cool alien spacecraft shaped like an “X.” Either way, it’s a tough one and I ended up getting really stuck in the middle until I changed one key domino.

The best place to start is the left and right bottom prongs. We know we need three 5’s to make Purple 15 (theoretically, you could do a combo like two 6’s and a 3 but we need the 6’s over in Blue 17). We also know that we’ll need the 4’s for the Green = group, since the 6’s are taken and we’ll need the 2’s for these smaller groups like Purple 4.

Step 1

Start by placing the double 5/5 in Purple 15 and the 5/6 from Purple 15 over into the Pink > 4 tile. Then put the double 6’s in Blue 17 and the 5/3 domino from Blue 17 over into the first free tile.

Step 2

We’ll tackle the top left prong next. Place the 2/2 domino in the first Purple 4 tiles and the 4/6 domino from Purple 4 into the Blue > 4 tile. Next, place the 4/3 domino from Green = into Dark Blue > 5.

Solution

The 4/4 domino goes in the next two Green = tiles and the 4/1 domino goes next to that up into Orange 3. The 3/1 domino lays across from Dark Blue > 5 into Orange 3. The 1/2 domino goes from Orange 3 over into Pink ≠ and the 4/2 domino lays across from Pink ≠ into the second and final free tile.

I got stuck here in the middle section. I had everything so close but I didn’t have the right number of 1 Pips dominoes to make Orange 3 work. I eventually figured out my mistake and ploughed on through. I’m very curious if anyone else got a different solution because this seems like a very precise Pips where everything has to be just so to succeed.

Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Be sure to follow me for all your daily puzzle-solving guides, TV show and movie reviews and more here on this blog!