Monday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Today's boards lean on repetition and strict zone rules rather than raw combinatorics, so the work is in reading the constraints before you touch a domino. We've got a quick hint and the full solution for each of the Easy, Medium, and Hard puzzles.
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
Trickiest Puzzle: Hard - the combination of a high-threshold zone and exact-total zones forces you to commit early, and a single misplaced domino cascades through the rest of the board.
Our Take: Today's set is a good reminder that Pips rewards constraint reading over trial and error. The zone list is dense with repeated condition types, which can lull you into pattern-matching instead of counting. Slow down on the first two placements and the rest of the grid solves itself.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.