Wednesday brings a fresh set of NYT Pips puzzles. Today's grid leans on tight equality zones and a demanding teal block, so the puzzles reward careful zone accounting over guesswork.
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 zone layouts for all three difficulties share the same structure, so the real test is how disciplined you are with your scarce zero-pip and high-value dominoes.
Trickiest Puzzle: Hard - the teal block demands a >16 total and two separate teal (=) cells at once, which forces you to commit your value-4 dominoes before you can see the whole board.
Our Take: Today's set is a good reminder that Pips is an accounting puzzle first and a placement puzzle second. The players who count their zeros and their sixes before placing anything will solve all three levels fast.
If you struggled, it was almost certainly a resource-allocation error, not a logic error.
Tomorrow's Pips drops at midnight. See you then.
