Key Highlights
- The New York Times’ Pips logic puzzle—launched in August 2025—receives daily hint guides; this edition covers the September 22 grids across Easy, Medium, and Hard tiers.
- Unlike classic dominoes, Pips uses color-coded logic zones (Number, Equal, Not Equal, Less Than, Greater Than) that dictate pip sums or values on tile halves occupying each zone.
- Mashable publishes piece-by-piece solutions for every difficulty so players can nudge past a single zone without revealing the entire board and resetting the streak.
Pips Joins the NYT Daily Games Lineup
The New York Times continues to expand its subscription gaming portfolio with Pips, a single-player logic puzzle that debuted in August 2025. Built on the familiar skeleton of dominoes—tiles placed vertically or horizontally with matching adjacent ends&Pips introduces a layer of color-coded constraint zones that transform the game from simple matching into arithmetic and logic deduction. Each daily release serves three fixed difficulty boards—Easy, Medium, and Hard—and the NYT app currently offers only a “reveal full puzzle” lifeline, which forces the player to abandon the current grid and advance to the next tier. To preserve streaks while still offering a nudge, Mashable publishes zone-by-zone hints and complete solutions for every day’s set.
How Pips Works: Rules and Color-Coded Conditions
At first glance the board resembles a domino layout: rectangular tiles, each split into two halves bearing 0–6 pips, must be placed so that touching ends match in value. The twist is the overlay of colored regions that impose extra rules on any tile half sitting inside them. An uncolored cell carries no extra condition. The five active zone types are:
- Number (n): All pips in the zone must sum to n.
- Equal: Every half in the zone must show the identical pip count.
- Not Equal: Every half in the zone must display a different pip count.
- Less Than (n): Every half in the zone must be strictly < n.
- Greater Than (n): Every half in the zone must be strictly > n.
A single tile can straddle two zones—only the half inside a colored region obeys that region’s rule. This interplay between domino adjacency and zone arithmetic creates the puzzle’s depth.
September 22 Solutions by Difficulty
Easy
- Less Than (3): 1–2 vertical
- Number (1): 1–2 vertical; 0–0 horizontal
- Equal (5): 3–5 vertical; 5–5 horizontal
- Greater Than (5): 6–5 horizontal
- Greater Than (4): 6–5 horizontal
Medium
- Greater Than (3): 4–5 vertical
- Number (11): 4–5 vertical; 6–6 horizontal
- Number (6): 6–6 horizontal; 0–1 vertical
- Number (7): 0–1 vertical; 6–1 horizontal
- Equal (1): 1–2 horizontal; 6–1 horizontal
- Number (2): 1–2 horizontal; 0–5 horizontal
- Equal (5): 0–5 horizontal; 3–5 vertical
Hard
- Equal (4): 3–4 vertical; 4–2 horizontal
- Less Than (3): 4–2 horizontal
- Equal (3): 3–2 horizontal; 3–3 vertical; 3–6 horizontal; 3–1 vertical
- Greater Than (4): 3–6 horizontal
- Number (1): 3–1 vertical; 0–6 horizontal
- Number (6): 0–6 horizontal
- Number (6): 5–1 vertical
- Equal (1): 1–1 vertical
- Number (2) [dark blue]: 1–4 vertical; 1–2 horizontal
- Number (2) [green]: 1–2 horizontal
- Number (7): 1–4 vertical; 3–5 horizontal
- Number (11): 3–5 horizontal; 6–5 vertical
- Number (10): 6–5 vertical; 5–4 vertical
- Number (8): 5–4 vertical; 6–4 horizontal
- Number (6): 6–4 horizontal
Why This Matters
Pips represents the New York Times’ latest bet on logic hybrids that blend spatial reasoning with arithmetic—a formula that has driven retention for Wordle, Connections, and Strands. By publishing granular, zone-level hints rather than full-board spoilers, Mashable supports the NYT’s design intent: keeping players in the “flow channel” between frustration and boredom. The September 22 grids showcase the difficulty curve’t increasing zone count, tighter number ranges, and multi-color overlap on Hard—which mirrors the onboarding progression the Times uses across its puzzle suite. For subscribers, the daily Pips habit reinforces the Games bundle’s value proposition ahead of renewal cycles.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- Where can I play Pips?
- Pips is available inside the New York Times Games app and on the NYT Games website for subscribers.
- Does the NYT app provide partial hints?
- Not currently. The built-in help button reveals the entire solution and advances you to the next difficulty, so external guides like Mashable’s are the only way to get a single-zone nudge.
- Are the September 22 solutions reusable on other dates?
- No. Each daily Pips release generates unique boards; the tile placements and zone layouts change every 24 hours.
