NYT ‘Pips’ Hints & Answers For Monday, December 15

I hope all you fine puzzle-solving Pipsqueaks had a lovely and relaxing weekend. It’s back to the old grindstone now, but if you have a moment to solve some puzzles, we have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips to solve. Shall we?

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 “E” as in “Easy” which this Hard Pips is, despite looking so formidable — or “Erik” as in me, your humble guide, or “Excellent” as in “Pips is an excellent game and Erik is an excellent guide.” Or “Eh.”

Step 1

The obvious and only place to start in today’s Hard Pips is the 1 into Blue 1 jutting left into Dark Blue ≠. I made this a whole step because I wanted to just point out that this is the definitive way to begin this puzzle. There are no other dominoes with a “1” so it must be this.

Second, I wanted to convey a little tip about the ≠ groups. These are very, very often comprised of a lot of doubles. So if you have a ≠ group and doubles, always try to use them — obviously not both sides in the ≠ group, but with one side from each double. Today’s Pips is a great example of how this works.

Step 2

The second obvious domino is the 2/3 domino, as we have a Pink 2 tile and just one domino with a “2” side. Where it goes is a little less obvious, however. It can’t go up (that’s a Purple 5) but it could go into Dark Blue ≠ or the free tile. But recall what I said about doubles. We can see an Orange 3 tile next to Dark Blue ≠ and I’m going to assume that uses our 3/3 domino. So place the 2/3 from Pink 2 into the free tile.

Next, we’ll grab our four double dominoes and go to work. 0/0 goes from Orange 0 into Dark Blue ≠. 5/5 goes from Purple 5 into Dark Blue ≠. 3/3 goes from Orange 3 into Dark Blue ≠ and 4/4 goes from Green 4 into Dark Blue ≠. It’s almost too predictable at this point.

Solution

Now it’s just a matter of filling in the obvious remaining tiles. The 5/6 domino goes from Blue > 4 into Pink 11 and the 5/4 domino goes from Pink 11 into Purple 4.

At the bottom, 3/0 goes from Blue = into Pink < 3; 3/5 goes from Blue = into Purple > 4; 3/6 goes from Blue = into Green > 5; and 3/4 goes from Blue = into Dark Blue 4. That’s a wrap!

This was a surprisingly simple Hard Pips. It looked so daunting! But it was “E” for easy. Or “eggs.” I do love eggs.

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