NYT ‘Pips’ Hints & Answers For Tuesday, December 9

It’s a glorious, sunny December day today. The kind of late autumn day that makes you forget about winter, though that morning chill is a stark reminder of things to come. It’s too lovely out to spend all day at a keyboard, so let’s solve today’s Pips and go bask in the sun.

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:

Today’s Hard Pips is either an “8” or a “B” but whatever it is, it’s quite the tricky puzzle. A couple clues at first glance:

• First, the Orange = group requires five tiles and only 2’s or 5’s can fit that condition.
• Second, we have three large Total groups: Dark Blue 17, Purple 12, Blue > 8 and Purple 14. This tells me that we’ll need most of our 5’s and 6’s to finish these groups.

Going with these assumptions, Orange = is almost certainly 2’s. That’s where we’ll begin.

Step 1

Place the 2/2 domino dead center on the right side of Orange = and the 2/0 domino up from Orange = into Blue < 3. Place the 2/6 domino going down from Orange = into Purple 12.

Step 2

Place the 6/5 domino from Purple 12 over into Blue > 8 and the 5/4 domino up from Blue > 8 into the Green = group. Next, place the 6/3 domino from Dark Blue 17 down into Pink < 4 and the 6/4 domino from Dark Blue 17 over into the Green = group.

Solution

The 2/3 domino will go from Orange = into the first free tile and the 5/0 domino goes from Dark Blue 17 up into the Pink = group. Next, place the 5/5 domino in the right two tiles of Purple 14 and the 4/0 domino from Purple 14 down into the Pink = group. Finish this off with the 0/1 domino from Pink = into the second and final free tile. And that’s all folks!

I tried many different combinations here before completing this Pips correctly. I got really hung up in the bottom left side, trying to get a 5 and a 4 into Blue > 8, trying to fill Green = with 3’s and so forth. I had to backtrack and take a new approach before finally lining things up. I very much doubt there’s any alternative solutions, but I’m happy to be wrong about that if any of you fine Pipsqueaks found a different way.

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!