Pips, the newest addition to the New York Times’ game catalog, offers a unique, single-player twist on dominoes. Released in August 2025, the puzzle game is poised to become a new daily habit for enthusiasts.
For players seeking assistance, the game currently only offers a full puzzle reveal, which requires starting the level over. To help you progress, here are hints and solutions for each difficulty.
How to Play Pips
Familiarity with dominoes is helpful, as Pips involves placing tiles vertically or horizontally to connect with one another. The key difference is that players must satisfy specific, color-coded conditions on the board. Unlike traditional dominoes, the touching ends of the tiles do not need to match.
These conditions apply only to the colored spaces on the grid. It is common for a single domino to lie partially within one of these zones.
Common conditions include:
- Number: The pips on all domino halves within the zone must add up to the specified number.
- Equal: Every domino half within the zone must have the same number of pips.
- Not Equal: Every domino half within the zone must have a different number of pips.
- Less Than: The sum of all pips within the zone must be less than the specified number.
- Greater Than: The sum of all pips within the zone must be greater than the specified number.
If an area of the board is not colored, there are no conditions for the dominoes placed there.
Pips Hints and Answers for August 21
Easy Difficulty
- Number (2): Place the 2-3 domino horizontally.
- Number (7, red space): Place the 2-3 domino horizontally and the 4-3 domino vertically.
- Number (7, blue space): Place the 4-3 and 4-5 dominoes vertically.
- Number (9): Place the 4-5 and 4-2 dominoes horizontally.
- Number (2): Place the 4-2 domino horizontally.
Medium Difficulty
- Not Equal: Place the 6-5 and 3-2 dominoes vertically.
- Number (5, red space): Place the 2-0 and 5-1 dominoes horizontally, and the 1-1 domino vertically.
- Number (5, green space): Place the 0-5 domino horizontally.
Hard Difficulty
- Equal (5): Place the 5-2, 5-5, and 5-0 dominoes vertically, and the 5-6 domino horizontally.
- Number (10): Place the 4-4 and 5-6 dominoes horizontally.
- Number (0): Place the 5-0 and 0-1 dominoes vertically, and the 0-0 domino horizontally.
- Equal (1): Place the 0-1 and 6-1 dominoes vertically, and the 1-1 and 4-1 dominoes horizontally.
- Number (4): Place the 0-4 domino horizontally.
- Number (3): Place the 3-0 domino vertically.
