NYT Pips Hints, Walkthrough And Solutions For Monday, November 3

If you’re having trouble solving today’s NYT Pips puzzle, you’re not alone — and I’m here to help. I have the solutions for the Easy and Medium Pips puzzles below as well as a full walkthrough of today’s Hard Pips. It’s a pretty tricky one, too. Let’s solve it, shall we?

Looking for Sunday’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 blocky Pips looks like, well, I guess a block. An oddly-shaped block. Or perhaps a robot’s face, with its nose the Purple < 3 tile on the left. In any case, it’s a bit daunting at first blush. Lots of conditions and lots of single Less Than tiles. One large ≠ group that requires 6 of the 7 possible numbers at our disposal. No super clear place to begin, but begin we must.

Step 1

The clue for a good starting point was the Dark Blue > 16 group. We know this will eat up at least three of our larger Pips, including both our 6’s. Start with the 2/5 domino from Purple < 3 into Dark Blue > 16. Then use the 6/5 domino from Dark Blue > 16 into Pink ≠ and the 6/3 domino from Dark Blue > 16 into the Green = group.

Step 2

Place the 2/1 domino from Pink < 3 into Blue < 2. Then place the 0/3 domino from Orange < 1 into the remaining Green = tile. The 1/0 domino goes in the second Blue < 2 tile over into the second Orange < 1 tile, like so:

Solution

We’ve saved the Pink ≠ group for last (mostly). We have lots of doubles left, and these will all be used here. Start with the 5/0 domino from Purple 5 into Pink ≠. Then fit all the doubles: 1/1 from Purple 1 into Pink ≠, 4/4 into Blue 4 / Pink ≠, 2/2 in Orange 2 / Pink ≠ and 3/3 into Green 3 / Pink ≠ and you’re done.

I actually suspected that we’d use the doubles this way, but I wasn’t sure until I got there. The fact that so many < tiles were next to one another made it less likely that we’d be using doubles on that half of the grid. This made the most daunting portion of today’s Pips a lot easier.

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