The New York Times’ Pips puts a fresh spin on dominoes, turning the familiar tile game into a single-player daily puzzle. Released in August 2025, the game challenges players to arrange dominoes while meeting conditions set by color-coded spaces.
If you get stuck, Pips currently reveals the entire puzzle rather than offering individual hints. The answers below provide step-by-step guidance for each difficulty level.
How to play Pips
Players place domino tiles vertically or horizontally so they connect with one another. Unlike traditional dominoes, touching tiles do not necessarily have to match. Instead, each color-coded space sets a condition for the domino halves inside it.
A space may contain only part of a domino tile. Common Pips conditions include:
- Number: All the pips in the space must add up to the specified number.
- Equal: Every domino half in the space must have the same number of pips.
- Not Equal: Every domino half in the space must have a different number of pips.
- Less than: Every domino half in the space must contain fewer pips than the specified number.
- Greater than: Every domino half in the space must contain more pips than the specified number.
Uncolored spaces have no conditions for the portions of dominoes placed inside them.
Easy Pips answers and hints for August 31
- Less Than (4): Everything in this space must be less than 4. The answer is 3-5, placed horizontally.
- Equal (5): Everything in this space must be equal to 5. The answer is 3-5, placed horizontally; 5-6, placed horizontally.
- Equal (6): Everything in this space must be equal to 6. The answer is 5-6, placed horizontally; 6-4, placed vertically.
- Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally; 6-4, placed vertically; 4-1, placed horizontally.
- Less Than (3): Everything in this space must be less than 3. The answer is 4-1, placed horizontally.
Medium Pips answers and hints for August 31
- Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-0, placed vertically.
- Greater Than (3): Everything in this space must be greater than 3. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally.
- Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally; 4-1, placed vertically.
- Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 4-1, placed vertically; 5-6, placed vertically.
- Greater Than (7): Everything in this space must be greater than 7. The answer is 5-6, placed vertically.
- Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 2-1, placed horizontally; 2-3, placed vertically.
- Less Than (4): Everything in this space must be less than 4. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically.
- Equal (5): Everything in this space must be equal to 5. The answer is 5-5, placed vertically.
Hard Pips answers and hints for August 31
- Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-6, placed horizontally.
- Number (10): Everything in this space must add up to 10. The answer is 2-6, placed horizontally; 4-3, placed vertically.
- Number (10): Everything in this space must add up to 10. The answer is 5-5, placed horizontally.
- Equal (2): Everything in this space must be equal to 2. The answer is 2-2, placed vertically.
- Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally.
- Equal (3): Everything in this space must be equal to 3. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally; 3-6, placed vertically; 4-3, placed vertically; 3-3, placed horizontally.
- Number (12): Everything in this space must add up to 12. The answer is 3-6, placed vertically; 6-4, placed horizontally.
- Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 6-4, placed horizontally.
- Number (12): Everything in this space must add up to 12. The answer is 6-6, placed horizontally.
- Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-1, placed vertically.
- Number (8): Everything in this space must add up to 8. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically; 5-4, placed horizontally.
- Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 5-4, placed horizontally; 4-2, placed horizontally.
- Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 4-2, placed horizontally.
- Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed horizontally; 5-1, placed vertically.
For more puzzles, Mashable’s games hub includes Mahjong, Sudoku, free crosswords and more.
Source: mashable.com
