NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Solution And Walkthrough For Thursday, November 20

Another Thor’s Day, another NYT Pips puzzle to solve. We have an Easy, a Medium (which I found quite tricky!) and a pretty fun Hard Pips to solve today. Without further adieu, let’s lay down some dominoes!

Looking for Wednesday’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:

As you can see, this one is an 11. We’ve seen (I think) 0 – 11 as Hard Pips so far, though not at all in order, even if some segments (9, 10, 11) have been in order.

Step 1

The obvious starting point on today’s Hard Pips is the Purple 18 group, simply because we know that all three tiles need to be 6’s. We also know that the Dark Blue 3 group will need to be small numbers, either a combination of 2, 1 and blank or 1’s and a blank. Looking ahead, it seemed obvious that the 2’s will be required for one of the big = groups, so I went with 1’s and a blank.

Place the 6/3 domino in the Purple 18 group over into the free tile. Then place the 6/4 domino from Purple 18 into Blue = and the 6/1 domino from Purple = into Dark Blue 3.

Step 2

Next, place the 1/1 domino in the next two Dark Blue 3 tiles and the 4/4 domino right next to them in the Blue = tiles. The 0/4 domino goes beneath both of those, from Dark Blue 3 into Blue = like so:

Step 3

The first “1” is done. It’s hard to tell if 5’s or 2’s go in Pink = or Green = and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone finds a different solution than mine. Start here with the 5/5 domino at the top of Pink = and the 5/6 domino from Pink = into Orange = and then place the 5/2 domino from the final Pink = tile into the first Green = tile.

Solution

Place the 2/6 domino from Green = into the last Orange = tile. Then place the 2/3 domino from Green = into the Purple 3 tile and the 2/1 domino will wrap things up from the Green = group into the last free tile. Voila! Presto! We’re done!

How did you do on today’s Pips? Did anyone find a different solution?

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