Sunday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Today's set features a consistent pattern across all difficulty levels with identical zone conditions, making it a unique challenge that tests your domino placement strategy across Easy, Medium, and Hard modes. 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
Quick Hints (No Spoilers)
Starting Point: Despite being Hard difficulty, start with the same approach - target the exact number zones first (purple 6, pink 6, teal 6) to establish numerical anchors.
Key Insight: The challenge here is spatial arrangement - you have the same domino set and conditions as Easy/Medium, but the grid layout requires more careful placement planning.
Watch Out For: The teal (<6) zone only accepts values less than 6. Don't accidentally place a 6 in this zone. Also, the equal zones (purple = and orange =) require dominoes with matching ends - plan your doubles carefully.
Hard Pips Solution
Last chance to solve independently
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- 1.Place the 2/2 domino horizontally in the purple (6) zone
- 2.Place the 0/3 domino horizontally in the pink (0) zone and teal (<6) zone
- 3.Place the 0/6 domino vertically in the pink (0) zone
- 4.Place the 2/0 domino vertically in the purple (6) zone and navy (0) zone
- 5.Place the 2/4 domino vertically in the purple (=) zone
- 6.Place the 4/4 domino vertically in the purple (=) zone
- 7.Place the 4/6 domino horizontally in the purple (=) zone and orange (=) zone
- 8.Place the 3/3 domino vertically in the pink (6) zone
- 9.Place the 6/5 domino horizontally in the orange (=) zone and teal (6) zone
- 10.Place the 2/1 domino vertically in the teal (<6) zone and orange (6) zone
- 11.Place the 5/0 domino vertically in the orange (6) zone and green (0) zone
- 12.Place the 0/1 domino vertically in the green (0) zone and teal (6) zone
Puzzle Debrief
Overall Difficulty: Unusual pattern - identical puzzles across all three difficulty levels today. This creates a unique meta-challenge where the difficulty comes from your own strategic approach rather than puzzle complexity.
Trickiest Puzzle: Hard - not because of different conditions, but because the expectation of increased difficulty makes players overthink the identical solution. The mental challenge of accepting that Hard uses the same solution as Easy is the real test.
Our Take: Today's identical puzzle set across all difficulties is a clever design choice that tests consistency and pattern recognition. It reinforces that sometimes the hardest puzzles are the ones that look simplest. The key lesson: don't overcomplicate when the solution is straightforward. All three puzzles teach efficient domino placement and zone condition management.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.
