Friday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Easy offers a compact two-row warmup, while Medium mixes equality clues with tight totals. Hard changes the rhythm with single-cell zones, putting the focus on how the dominoes fit together. We've got hints, a step-by-step walkthrough, and full solutions for Easy, Medium, and Hard.
How to Play Pips
Pips is a domino placement puzzle where you fill a grid of condition zones. Each zone has a rule you must satisfy using the pip values on your dominoes. The twist: you must use every domino and meet every condition to win.
Zone Conditions:
- = All pips in this zone must show the same number
- Not Equal All pips must be different numbers
- > Pips must be greater than the listed number
- < Pips must be less than the listed number
- Exact Number Pips must total that exact value
- No Condition Free space, any domino value works
Click or tap dominoes to rotate them. Each puzzle has one or more valid solutions. In the grids below, rows read top to bottom and a 0 is a blank domino half. When two zones share the same rule, we number them in reading order, top to bottom.
Easy Pips Solution
Medium Pips Solution
Hard Pips Solution
Overall Difficulty: This set builds from a tidy Easy board into a more involved exercise in tile management. Medium adds variety through its equality zone and inequalities, while Hard asks you to coordinate sixteen dominoes.
Trickiest Puzzle: Hard is the trickiest board because its explicit cell values still leave the domino pairings to resolve. The 3-6 provides a useful anchor, placing its 6 in the unclued cell at row 4, column 5.
Our Take: Our take is that Hard supplies the day's strongest change of pace. With single-cell clues doing the arithmetic for you, checking both ends of every domino becomes the satisfying part.
Until Tomorrow
Thanks for solving with us, and enjoy the satisfaction of fitting that final tile.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.