NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Solution And Walkthrough For Friday, November 21

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We woke up to snow on Thursday, and we’re set to get more all through the weekend. It’s cold and icy out. I’m dreaming of a warm beach. For now, I will stay warm inside and solve my puzzles. We have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips to solve, and the numbers game continues, with yet another Hard Pips shaped like a number, with lots of tile groups adding up that number. It’s not a lucky number, either, especially on a Friday. Let’s solve it anyways!

Looking for Thursday’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:

Lucky number 13 today for our Hard Pips. Four of the groups add up to 13, which is a tricky number in a lot of ways. Lots of different ways to make 13, for one thing. We have a couple places we could start, however. We know the two blank dominoes we have must go in the Purple 0 tiles. We also know that a double is required for Pink = at the bottom of the “3.”

Step 1

I decided to start in the Pink = group simply because the Purple 0 was almost a freebie. I know that 0/1 and 0/6 have to go there, which means I know that another 6 will have to go in the third Blue 13 tile. But which 6? We have a few. I figured I’d try to cut that number down a bit by tackling the “3” first.

I also assumed that we’d need the 6’s for each of the 13 groups, so I used the 4/4 (instead of the 6/6) in the first two Pink = tiles. I had a couple other 4’s to choose from next, but I didn’t want to use a 6 here and at this point, we wouldn’t have enough 1’s to fill Orange = so I picked the 4/3 domino. Next, I placed the 5/3 domino from Purple > 4 into Orange =.

Step 2

This next part was tricky. I had a 3/6 domino that could go up into Pink 13 or a 3/1 domino. I wasn’t sure which to use, so I just placed the 3/1 domino from Orange = into Pink 13 and the 6/6 domino next to that. It’s entirely possible that you can solve this using a different combination, but this is what ended up working for me.

Step 3

Next, I moved back over to the Purple 0 tiles, placing the 0/6 and 0/1 dominoes down into Blue 13. I placed the 6/4 domino from Blue 13 down into Dark Blue 13.

Solution

At this point, it was just a matter of adding up what I had left and seeing which way to spin the dominoes. I placed the 2/6 domino, the 6/3 domino and the 1/4 domino each from Dark Blue into Green 13 and the Pips was complete!

I’m very curious to see if anyone solved this a different way. I’m often surprised by the alternative solutions readers send me, though sometimes the differences are quite minor and other times significantly different.

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!