NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers, And Walkthrough, Thursday November 27

Happy Thanksgiving, Pipsqueaks! It’s Turkey Day at long last and so I will be brief. I know everyone is busy getting ready for feasting and football and friends and family and all the rest. Let’s solve today’s Pips!

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:

Today’s Hard Pips is brought to you by the letter “T” as in Thanksgiving or Turkey or Timbuktu. I am thankful for this fun new game that not enough people are playing. I am also thankful for you fine Pipsqueaks and the alternative solutions you share with me. It’s wild to see how different these can be sometimes.

Step 1

Today’s Pips doesn’t have a super obvious starting point, but I made what I think was a pretty reasonable deduction. The Orange 12 group requires two 6’s and the only pips we have five of for Purple = are blanks. So I kicked off today’s Hard Pips with the 6/0 domino from Orange 12 into Purple = and then placed the 0/0 domino beneath that in the Purple = group. Finish off this step by placing the 0/2 domino down into the Pink = group.

Step 2

Place the 2/4 domino from Pink = into Blue = and the 4/5 domino up from Blue = into the Green = group. Next, place the 5/5 domino right next to the 0/0 domino in the Green = group.

Solution

The 6/2 domino will go from Orange 12 into the first free tile and the 5/0 domino will go next to that from the free tile into the final Purple = tile. Next, place the 3/6 domino from Pink > 2 into Blue = and the 6/4 domino from Blue = down into Dark Blue =. We’ll wrap this Pips up with the 4/1 domino from Dark Blue = over into the final free tile.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone! Did you find a different solution to today’s Hard Pips? Did anyone else find the Medium Pips just as hard today?

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