NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers, And Walkthrough For Monday, December 1

Happy December, Pipsqueaks! It’s the first day of a brand new month and the last month of a year that’s almost expire. Grab your dominoes and your thinking cap. Let’s solve today’s Pips!

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:

Today’s Hard Pips is brought to you by the letter “U” as in “Ukelele” or “Ultimate frisbee.” We’ll start with the two Dark Blue groups on the right side.

Step 1

First, place the 6/5 domino from Dark Blue 12 into Green 10. Place the 6/2 domino from Dark Blue 12 into the Blue 12 group (which has six tiles, meaning if each one of them is a “2” it’ll work out). Place the 6/6 domino in the upper Dark Blue 12 group.

Step 2

Since we’re committed to 2’s in the Blue 12 group, place the 4/2 domino at the top-right from Orange > 3 into Blue 12. Place the 2/2 domino below that and the 3/2 domino from Orange > 2 into Blue 12.

Step 3

We have a lot of free tiles, but we’re going to save all of those for the end. Place the 2/0 domino from Blue 12 into Pink 0 and the 6/0 domino from Purple 12 into Pink 0. Next, place the 5/1 domino from Green > 4 into Purple 3 and the 3/1 domino in Pink < 4 into Purple 3. Rule of thumb: If it’s a < or > symbol, try to find a number that’s just one over.

Solution

We’ll fill in all the free tiles now. The 1/4 domino goes from Purple 3 into the first free tile. The 6/3 domino goes from Purple 12 into the second free tile. The 0/3 domino goes from Pink 0 into the third free tile. And the 5/0 domino goes from Green 10 into the final free tile. Our dirty deeds are done dirt cheap.

Did you find a different solution for today’s Hard Pips?

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