Saturday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Today's trio leans on tight numeric zones and repeated constraint patterns, so read the board before you touch a single 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 overlapping zone conditions leave very little slack, so a single early misread of a strict zone forces a full rebuild later.
Our Take: Today's set rewards disciplined scanning over guesswork. The recurring pattern of equal-value and greater-than zones means the same core logic scales across all three difficulties, which makes this a good day to practice constraint-first solving. Slow down at the start, and the rest falls into place.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.
