Pips is the New York Times’ domino-inspired daily puzzle: you lay tiles vertically or horizontally so that the halves which fall inside colored zones meet the zone’s rule. If you want to play today’s board first, launch Pips on the NYT Games site at nytimes.com/games/pips.

How Pips works (fast refresher)

Tiles behave like dominoes: each has two numbered halves and can be placed upright or sideways. Adjacent tiles connect orthogonally, but their touching numbers don’t need to match. What matters are the colored regions on the board—only the tile halves that sit inside a region must satisfy that region’s rule. Any uncolored squares have no constraints.

  • Number (n): All pips inside the region must sum to n.
  • Equal (n): Every domino half inside the region must show n.
  • Not Equal: Each half inside the region must be a different value.
  • Less than (n): Each half inside the region is a value less than n.
  • Greater than (n): Each half inside the region is a value greater than n.

Note: Because only the portion inside a region has to comply, a placement like 6–1 can satisfy “Less than 2” if the 1 half sits inside the colored area and the 6 half sits outside.

Today’s Pips answers (September 23)

Below are incremental placements to nudge you through each difficulty without revealing the entire board at once.

Easy

Region Valid placement(s)
Greater than (2) Place 3–4 horizontally.
Equal (4)
  • 1–4 horizontally
  • 4–4 vertically
  • 4–5 horizontally
  • 3–4 horizontally
Number (5) 4–5 horizontally.

Medium

Region Valid placement(s)
Greater than (1) 2–5 horizontally.
Equal (5)
  • 0–5 horizontally
  • 2–5 horizontally
  • 5–5 horizontally
  • 5–6 vertically
Greater than (2) 3–6 vertically.
Equal (6)
  • 5–6 vertically
  • 3–6 vertically
  • 6–6 horizontally
  • 6–1 vertically
  • 6–0 vertically
  • 6–2 vertically
  • 6–4 vertically
Less than (2) 6–1 vertically.
Less than (1) 6–0 vertically.
Greater than (3) 6–4 vertically.

Hard

Region Valid placement(s)
Number (2) 6–1 vertically; 1–2 vertically.
Number (2) 1–2 vertically; 0–3 vertically.
Equal (3)
  • 0–3 vertically
  • 3–3 vertically
  • 3–2 horizontally
  • 3–1 vertically
Number (2) 3–2 horizontally; 0–4 horizontally.
Greater than (2) 0–4 horizontally.
Number (2) 3–1 vertically; 1–0 vertically.
Less than (2) 1–0 vertically.

That’s the full set of placements for today’s board, split by difficulty. If you’re new, the most reliable approach is to anchor the regions with strict constraints first (Equal or explicit Number targets), then work outward into comparative zones like “Greater than” and “Less than,” remembering that only the halves inside the color need to comply.