NYT ‘Pips’ Hints & Answers For Wednesday, December 10

Another lovely late autumn day, oh my Pipsqueaks. Lovely for getting outside and just chilly enough to justify staying indoors. And if you’re stuck indoors, what better way to spend your time than with a pile of dominoes and some bright, colorful tiles to fill? We have an Easy, Medium and Hard Pips to solve this fine Wednesday. Let’s solve them!

Looking for Tuesday’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 “F” as in “Fly me to the moon” and “Fuggetaboutit.” I actually found this one pretty easy, though I had to swap out a couple of dominoes when I got to the end and had two 2’s in Purple < 4. I just had to swap out 1’s from Orange = and replace those with 2’s and everything came together just fine.

Step 1

Start with the 5/0 domino from Purple > 4 up into Green = and the 1/0 domino from the free tile into the Green = group. This was one of the dominoes I had to swap out, having used the 2/0 domino here earlier. Maybe if I’d left that one open I would have had an easier time, but then I don’t always follow my own advice.

Next, place the 0/4 domino from Green = into Dark Blue 16 and the 0/2 domino from Green = into the Orange = group.

Step 2

The 6/6 domino finishes off the Dark Blue 16 group. Then, place the 2/1 domino up into Purple < 4 and the 2/4 domino from Orange = into Pink =. The 1/4 domino goes from Purple < 4 into Pink =, like so:

Solution

Two dominoes left. The 6/4 domino goes from Blue 9 over into Pink = and the 3/1 domino goes from Blue 9 into the final free tile.

Did you find an alternative solution for today’s puzzle?

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