Tuesday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Today's set leans on the classics: tight "=" zones, a heavy teal cluster, and a nasty set of zero constraints that punish sloppy placement.
Expect a steady ramp from Easy to Hard, with the Hard grid demanding real discipline on orientation. 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 Trickiest Puzzle: Hard - The zone layout itself is identical across all three levels, which lulls you into autopilot. Hard punishes that complacency: the teal (>16) and teal (=) zones sit side by side and both compete for the same high-value dominoes, while three separate zero zones demand precise zero allocation.
One misplaced straddle and the whole grid collapses.
Our Take: Today's set is a lesson in constraint management. The identical layouts across Easy, Medium, and Hard mean the difficulty lives entirely in how tightly the conditions interlock, not in new mechanics.
The strategic takeaway is simple: solve for zeroes first, then high-value zones, then everything in between. If you can track orientation on every straddling domino, Hard is very beatable.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.
