The New York Times has added another puzzle to its growing collection of daily games. Pips is a domino-based logic puzzle that challenges players to fill a board while meeting specific regional conditions, combining spatial reasoning with mathematical constraints.
Unlike Wordle or Connections, Pips requires understanding domino mechanics and regional rules simultaneously. The game presents varying difficulty levels and uses color-coded regions with different mathematical requirements that must be satisfied to complete each puzzle.
The objective is straightforward: place all available dominoes on the board while ensuring each colored region meets its specified condition. Success requires both logical thinking and strategic domino placement.
Here's how to start playing Pips and understand its core mechanics.
1. Launch Pips
Head to New York Times Games, whether that's online or through the app, and find Pips in the puzzle lineup. Click on it to get started.
You'll see three difficulty options: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Pick whichever sounds right for you and hit Play. The harder levels mean more complicated rules and trickier board layouts.
2. Understand the game mechanics
A popup will tell you the basic idea: Fill the board with all the dominoes to meet the conditions. Tap to rotate the dominoes. That covers the main goal, but there's more to learn about the colored areas.
The colored regions have little symbols in their bottom right corners that tell you what rules apply there. These are basically math requirements that your domino dots need to follow.
Areas without any color don't have special rules, you can put any domino there as long as it fits the puzzle.
3. Learn what the symbols mean
The game uses a few different types of rules. If you see Number 2, all the dots in that area need to add up to exactly 2.
An Equal Sign means all the dots in that region have to be the same number.
Less Than 7 means the dots need to add up to less than 7. Getting comfortable with these rules is key since your dominoes need to fit the space AND follow the math rules.
Each colored area shows its rule in the corner, so you can always double-check what you need to do.
4. Decide if you want help getting started
If you're new to this puzzle, hit Play Tutorial and the game will walk you through the basics with examples. It's pretty helpful for understanding how everything works together.
If you're already comfortable with logic puzzles, feel free to skip the tutorial and jump right in. You can always come back to it later if you get stuck.
The tutorial shows you how to spin dominoes around, where to place them, and how to satisfy those regional rules.
5. Get the hang of moving and placing dominoes
Tap any domino to rotate it — this is super important because you need the dots arranged just right to fit both the board space and meet the requirements for colored regions.
Think about how many dots each colored area needs and how turning a domino might affect nearby areas too. Sometimes you need to plan a few moves ahead to make sure everything works out.
Don't worry about making mistakes, the game will let you know right away if you've broken a rule, so you can try again and learn as you go.
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