Sunday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Today's trio leans on a stacked set of equality and threshold zones, so precision matters more than speed.
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 layout is consistent across all three tiers, but the stacked equality zones demand deliberate sequencing rather than guesswork.
Trickiest Puzzle: Hard - the green (0) and purple (<3) zones look interchangeable at a glance but enforce completely different rules, and the navy (0) zone hides an exact-total constraint behind a label that reads like an equality condition.
Our Take: Today's set rewards solvers who treat exact zones as fixed anchors and build outward. The recurring teal (=) cluster is the real gatekeeper, and players who waste the 4-series dominoes early will stall out fast.
Solve the constraints, not the picture, and the grid falls into place.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.
