Saturday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. The boards carry a familiar zone mix, and the strict zones do the heavy lifting early. We've got a quick hint 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 board punishes early guesses. Narrow zone conditions force a specific order of operations, and one wrong assumption cascades across the grid.
Our Take: Today's set rewards patience over speed. The strict zones are generous clues if you read them first, and each board gets easier the moment you stop hunting for clever placements and start eliminating impossible ones.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.