I made a hearty brunch on Thanksgiving and while I prepared the meal, I put on Christmas music. So it begins. The holiday season is upon us. The year 2025 is coming to an end. Thanksgiving is in the rearview and jolly Old Saint Nick is hard at work with his elves and reindeer and the myriad contractors he must employ to keep everything in tip-top shape. I doubt he has time for NYT Games puzzles, but we do. Let’s solve this Pips!
Looking for Thursday’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:
Today’s Hard Pips is brought to you by the letter “R” as in “Really, another letter-shaped Hard Pips?” or “Radical!” or “Rage against the dying of the light.” There are three 12 groups and one 11 group in this Pips, meaning we need to be judicious about our use of larger pip dominoes. There’s also a pretty obvious place to start, though not obvious enough for me to start there at first. I had to backtrack a bit. Here’s what to do instead.
Step 1
The Orange 0 tile is key here. Whatever domino you use here needs to go up into Purple 10. We only have two dominoes with blank sides: a 0/6 domino and a 0/0 domino. You can’t use the 0/0 because nothing could pair with that to make 10, so the only domino that can go here is the 0/6 domino. (You can’t go down into the free tile because you won’t be able to fit a second domino coming out of Green 12).
Next, place the 4/1 domino from Purple 10 into Pink 4 and the 3/2 domino from Pink 4 into Blue 12. Finally, Place the 5/5 domino into Blue 12.
Step 2
The Dark Blue 11 is also important. We know we’ll need a 5 and a 6 here, and we only have one 5 left. It has to go from Dark Blue 11 into the free tile, so place the 5/3 there. If we use the 6/6 domino in the next space, we won’t be able to come up with 12 in Purple 12. Instead, use the 6/4 domino and then fill in the rest of the Purple 12 with the 4/4 domino.
Solution
For our final step, place the 6/6 domino at the bottom of Green 12 and the 0/0 domino up from Green 12 into the free tile — and you’re done! Now you can get back to your Black Friday shopping . . . .
I sincerely doubt that there are any alternative solutions to today’s Pips, but maybe you can prove me wrong.
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