NYT ‘Pips’ Hints & Answers For Sunday, December 14

The weekend is speeding by and the only thing I can think of to try to slow it down is to kick up our heels and solve some puzzles. I’m not sure if it’ll work, but it can’t hurt. Right? Grab your dominoes, Pipsqueaks. We have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips to solve! And they’re all pretty tricky today. The Medium was much harder than usual, and this is the hardest Hard Pips I’ve come across in a week or so.

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:

Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes

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:

For today’s Pips Rorschach test (maybe we should call it a Pipshach test?) I see a mommy flamingo and a baby flamingo. You see it, too, don’t you?

I also see a very challenging, super daunting Hard Pips with no super obvious place to begin and a whopping fifteen dominoes to lay down. Sheesh!

When in doubt, we go with the clues we find, however meager they may be. To me, that’s the 12’s. We have a Pink 12 and a Green 12, each consisting of two tiles. This means each of these tiles will require a 6. We only have five 6’s in our domino stash, so almost all will be accounted for by the time we fill in these two groups.

Note: I was right in my instincts here, but ended up having to move some stuff around a bit later, but I was expecting that. Sometimes you just have to start placing dominoes and then go back and make adjustments.

Step 1

Start with the 6/3 domino from Pink 12 over into Orange 6. Then place the 6/4 domino from Pink 12 down into Dark Blue = and the 4/4 domino in the next two Dark Blue = tiles. The 3/1 domino goes from Orange 6 up into Purple < 2.

Step 2

Next, place the 4/2 domino from Dark Blue = down into Pink 2 and the 6/2 domino from Green 12 down into Blue 6. The 3/3 domino fills up both Orange = tiles and the 2/2 domino fills in the remaining Blue 6 tiles.

Step 3

Place the 6/1 domino from Green 12 up into Dark Blue 2 and the 1/2 domino from Dark Blue 2 into the Green 2 tile. (This is one area where I got a little mixed up at first). The 0/6 domino goes from the Pink < 2 tile into Blue 10 and the 4/3 domino goes from Blue 10 down into the Purple > 2 tile. We’ve finished up with the mommy flamingo, onto the baby!

Solution

The 4/0 domino goes from Orange 4 into Blue 4 and the 5/3 domino goes from Purple > 4 into Blue 4. That leaves just the 1/0 domino to fill in the last two Blue 4 tiles and we’re done!

I just realized this Hard Pips also had no free tiles, which adds another layer of challenge to the puzzle. I am curious if anyone found an alternative solution. I sure can’t think of any other way to make this work.

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!

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