NYT ‘Pips’ Hints, Answers, And Walkthrough For Sunday, December 7

Welcome back to your friendly neighborhood NYT Pips guide, oh my Pipsqueaks. The month of December is flying by and we’ve had some tricky Pips to solve. I had a really hard time figuring out where each domino went in yesterday’s extra-challenging Hard Pips! Let’s see if today’s is any easier.

Looking for Saturday’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:

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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:

I think this is an overhead view of a hotel lobby front desk. Or maybe the letter “D.” Whatever it is, there are some clues about where we need to start. I like to look at the largest groups and the single tiles when I’m not entirely sure. What’s clear here is:

The bottom left Orange 5 will determine what goes into the Pink = group. So will the bottom right Dark Blue 4 tile. We have three 5 dominoes: 5/1, 5/2 and 5/0. Any of these will work for the four tiles of Pink = but only if one can work with Dark Blue 4, since we have no 4/5 domino to go from Dark Blue 4 into Blue 5.

Step 1

Since we only have a 0/4 domino that could work with Pink = into Dark Blue 4, we’ll add that one and then the 5/0 domino from Orange 5 over to the Pink = tile to its right. The 0/6 domino will go above over into Dark Blue > 15.

Step 2

Next, place the 6/2 domino from Dark Blue > 15 up into the Orange > 2 tile and the 6/2 tile up into the upper Pink = group. The 5/2 domino goes from Purple 5 into Pink = like so:

Solution

The only double we have left that could work here is 1/1 which takes up the two top tiles of Blue = and the 1/2 domino goes from Blue = into the first free tile. We only have one more domino with 4’s, so place that from Green 4 into Purple ≠ and our last 5 domino (5/1) goes from Blue 5 into Purple ≠. Finally, the 2/2 domino will from Purple ≠ up into the last free tile.

This one definitely required some trial and error, but it was a lot easier than yesterday’s (or I just got lucky). Anybody find a different solution?

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