How to Solve NYT Pips: A Beginner's Guide

Pips is the daily domino puzzle from New York Times Games. It launched worldwide on 18 August 2025 as what NYT calls its first original logic puzzle, and it's free to play in the NYT Games app and on the web. Every day brings three separate boards, Easy, Medium and Hard, each with its own set of dominoes.

Shuffling pieces until something fits works on a small board, but even a mid-sized one has far too many layouts to try them all. This guide gives you a method instead. The example boards are our own, not real puzzles.

The rules in one minute

Each half of a domino shows 0 to 6 pips, as in a standard double-six set. (The pips are the dots, hence the name.) You drag a domino from the tray onto two side-by-side squares and tap or click it to turn it 90 degrees. The board has exactly twice as many squares as you have dominoes, so every piece gets used.

A domino can cross a region border, and often does. When it does, each half belongs to the region it lands in. Neighbouring pieces don't have to show the same number where they meet, as they would in a game of dominoes.

In the game, each region's condition appears at its bottom-right corner:

If a full board breaks a rule, the game says so, and you can keep rearranging with no penalty. New boards appear at midnight in your local time zone.

Solve a level under a target time and the game adds a cookie to your results. NYT doesn't publish the targets, and earning all three cookies in one day is called the Cookie Trifecta. The timer can be shown or hidden in the settings.

A five-step method

Pips editor Ian Livengood has shared three tips that rise in difficulty: find the toehold, look for extreme totals, and plan around the doubles. This method builds on all three. Go back to step 3 after every placement.

1. Take stock of the tray. Count the halves of each value, and note the doubles, the blanks (zero pips) and the sixes.
2. Read the shape. Look for squares with one free neighbour, narrow corridors and pockets a careless move could cut off.
3. Find the toehold. Look for something that fits only one way: a single square with a number or a tight limit, an extreme total, an = region that needs a double, or a value only one domino carries.
4. Place it and recheck. Each piece removes options from the regions it touches and from your tray.
5. Finish with the loose rules. ≠ regions and wide < and > limits usually fall into place late, and an uncoloured square is a good home for a half that no region wants.

Worked example: an Easy-sized board

This 2×4 board comes with four dominoes: 6|6, 2|2, 0|4 and 1|5.

• A: total 12
• B: =
• C: >4
• D: <1
• ·: uncoloured, no rule

1. Toehold. Only 6 + 6 makes 12 on two squares, and only the 6|6 has sixes, so it covers both A squares.
2. Shape. D now has one free neighbour, so one domino covers D and the uncoloured square beside it.
3. Single square. D is <1, so it must be blank, and only the 0|4 has a blank. Its 4 parks on the uncoloured square.
4. The = region. The 2|2 and 1|5 remain. Placed horizontally, one in each row, they would give B a 2 from one domino and a 1 or 5 from the other, which don't match. So both go vertically, and the domino filling B must be a double: the 2|2.
5. Finish. The 1|5 fills column 4, with its 5 on top because C must be over 4.

The board reads 6, 6, 2, 5 across the top and 0, 4, 2, 1 below. Every rule did some work, and nothing was guessed.

Deductions for each region type

Sums: hunt for the extremes

Very high and very low totals leave almost no choice. On two squares:

On three squares, 0, 1, 17 and 18 have one combination each (17 is always 6, 6 and 5). Middle totals need help from the tray: if a two-square region must total 4 and you hold no blanks, it can only be 1+3 or 2+2, so no 4 can go there. Also work backwards. A two-square 9 with a 3 already in place needs a 6 in its other square.

Equal (=)

Any domino lying wholly inside an = region must be a double, so a two-square = region filled by a single domino needs one. Larger regions need a value you hold enough of: four squares need four matching halves, and your tally often leaves a single candidate. Doubles also suit extreme totals: a 6|6 fills a two-square 12 on its own and a 0|0 fills a two-square 0, so decide early where each double goes.

Not equal (≠)

Every square must differ from every other, so one repeat breaks the rule, and a double can never lie wholly inside a ≠ region. Values run only from 0 to 6, so a big ≠ region is close to a full set: six squares leave out just one value, and seven would use every value once.

Less than and greater than

On single squares these are often quick wins. A square marked <1 can only be blank and one marked >5 can only be a six, while <2 or >4 leave two candidates that the tray often settles.

On two squares, tight limits behave like extreme totals: <2 allows only 0+0 or 0+1, and >10 only 5+6 or 6+6. Wide limits, such as <9 on two squares, rule out little until the board fills up.

Blanks and sixes are the most specialised values in your tray. Spend blanks where nothing else fits (small targets and < squares), and keep sixes for large targets and > squares.

Count your dominoes

Write out the tally before you place anything, and add up the grand total. Your dominoes carry a fixed number of pips, and the sum regions claim a known share, so the squares outside them (uncoloured, =, ≠, < and >) share whatever is left. If the tray carries 30 pips and the sum regions take 18, the rest of the board holds 12; when the rest is one three-square = region, that means three 4s.

Worked example: let the tray decide

This 2×5 board comes with five dominoes: 3|5, 1|3, 0|3, 6|6 and 2|4.

• E: =
• N: ≠
• G: total 1
• Z: total 0
• H: <3
• ·: uncoloured, no rule

1. Tally. Three 3s, two 6s (both on the double) and one each of 0, 1, 2, 4 and 5.
2. E. Only 3 appears three times, so E is 3, 3, 3. With no 3|3, each E square needs its own domino, using all three that carry a 3. The middle square can only point down, which forces the left one down too.
3. Single squares. G takes the only 1, so the 1|3 stands in column 2. Z takes the only blank, so the 0|3 must cover Z. Step 2 put every 3 in E, so it can't lie sideways onto the uncoloured square: it stands in column 3 with its 3 on top. The 3|5 fills column 1 and parks its 5 on the uncoloured square.
4. The last two. H is under 3, and the only value left that fits is the 2 on the 2|4. If that domino's 4 went left, the 6|6 would have to cover both N squares, two 6s in a ≠ region. So the 4 goes up, and the 6|6 stands in column 4.

The rows read 3, 3, 3, 6, 4 and 5, 1, 0, 6, 2. The tally fixed E before a piece went down, and the ≠ rule settled the last two.

Let the shape force moves

Before you read a single number, study the outline.

• Dead ends. A square with one free neighbour must share a domino with it. Corners and squares that jut out are the usual suspects, and every placement can create new ones, as D did in the first example.
• Corridors. In a dead-end strip one square wide, pairs form from the tip inwards, which fixes how the whole strip is covered.
• Odd pockets. Never cut off a single square, or any group with an odd number of squares. Dominoes can't fill it.
• Chessboard check. Picture the board shaded like a chessboard. Every domino covers one light and one dark square, so a pocket with more of one shade than the other can't be filled, even when its size is even. A T-shaped group of four is the simplest example.

How Easy, Medium and Hard differ

NYT doesn't publish size rules, but here's how the boards in our archive from August to October 2026 compare:

Some boards, mostly Medium and Hard, have more than one arrangement that meets every rule, and our boards show only one of them. If you're solving on paper and your layout differs from ours, check every region: if each rule holds, you've found another valid answer.

Common mistakes

• Applying a < or > limit to each square. On a region of two or more squares it limits the total.
• Reading ≠ as "not all the same". It means all different.
• Counting a piece's whole value in one region. When a domino crosses a border, each region gets only the half on its side.
• Cutting off an odd-sized pocket while placing a piece somewhere else.
• Putting a double wholly inside a ≠ region. Its halves always match; straddling the border is fine.
• Moving on without rechecking every region the last piece touched.

When to use hints

Reach for a hint once you've been through the method twice and found nothing forced, ideally after a short break.

Our daily Pips page has a tab for each difficulty, and every board starts hidden. Tap one domino, or any square, to see where that piece alone goes (often enough to restart your logic), or reveal the whole board at once. Regions with no rule are grey on our boards, where the game leaves them uncoloured, and each rule's badge sits on the region's top-left square rather than at its bottom-right corner.

At the time of writing the game has no archive of past boards, so our Pips archive keeps earlier ones, from August 2026 on, with the same reveal options. The daily puzzle hub covers the other games, and how we make hints explains where our answers come from and when our pages switch days (midnight Eastern time, not your local midnight). WordFinderZ is independent of The New York Times.

The short version

Find the move that has to be true, make it, and look again: tray and shape first, tight regions next, and ≠ regions and wide limits last. Practise that on Easy and Medium, and Hard becomes mostly a chain of small steps you can prove. For the same patient approach to word puzzles, try our Connections strategy and Letter Boxed tips.