NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers, And Walkthrough For Saturday, November 29

Thanksgiving is over, the final weekend of November is here. I have a couple days to myself, so I’m planning on going crazy and, uh, cleaning the house and doing some projects I’ve been meaning to get around to for a long time now. But I get to do that in relative peace and quiet, so it’s going to be lovely. Before all that, we have a Pips to solve. The Easy is easy, but the Medium Pips today is a real head-scratcher! Of course, we also have a Hard Pips, and while it’s pretty tough I thought Medium was more challenging today.

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:

I suppose this is a “W” given our recent Hard Pips letters theme. Lots of > groups in this one, which actually helps give us a place to start.

Step 1

We know that the Green 17 group will require two 6’s and one 5. We also know that we need four of the same Pips in Orange = and that one of these needs to be with a domino that’s > 3. I tested out a couple different Pips here, but settled on blanks.

Start by placing the 4/6 domino from Pink > 3 into Green 17 and the 5/0 domino from Green 17 into the Orange = group. Place the 4/0 domino from Dark Blue > 3 into Orange = and fill in the remaining two Orange = tiles with the double blank domino.

Step 2

At this point, I moved to the other side of the “W” and first I tried 3’s in Pink = but it didn’t work out so I went with 1’s instead. Place the 1/1 domino in the top two Pink = tiles and the 3/3 domino in the Blue = tiles. The 1/0 domino goes from Pink = down into the free tile and the 1/6 domino goes from Pink = into Purple > 9.

Solution

Place the 6/3 domino from Green 17 into the free tile and teh 5/2 domino from Purple > 9 into the next free tile. Finally, the 3/2 domino slots into the Purple > 2 tile over into the final free tile, and you’re done!

For whatever reason, the Medium stumped me way more than the Hard Pips today. I think this one probably has more than one solution, but I’m not sure. What did you get today?

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