Friday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Today's lineup features identical zone layouts across all three difficulty levels, making it an excellent day to compare how the same puzzle plays at Easy, Medium, and Hard. We've got hints, step-by-step walkthroughs, and full solutions for Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulty levels.
How to Play Pips
Pips is a domino placement puzzle where you fill a grid of color-coded zones. Each zone has a condition 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 equal 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 Color Free space, any domino value works
Click or tap dominoes to rotate them. Each puzzle has one or more valid solutions.
Today's Easy Pips
Today's Medium Pips
Today's Hard Pips
Puzzle Debrief
Overall Difficulty: Moderate challenge. The zone layout is identical across all three difficulties today, so the difference comes down to grid size and domino count rather than new constraints.
Trickiest Puzzle: Hard - Managing multiple equal-value zones (green (=) and teal (=)) simultaneously while tracking exact-number totals for purple (10) and navy (10) creates the most cognitive load. One misstep in the equal-value propagation chain forces a full restart.
Our Take: Today's identical-zone layout across all three difficulties is unusual and actually helpful. You can solve Easy to learn the zone geometry, then apply that knowledge to Medium and Hard without starting from scratch. The purple (10) and navy (10) zones are the critical bottlenecks -- get those right and the rest of the puzzle falls into place. Solid Friday workout for the brain.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.
