Discover your ultimate guide to Pips, the newest addition to the New York Times gaming library.

Launched in August 2025, Pips provides a fresh take on dominoes, delivering an entertaining single-player experience that could easily turn into your daily gaming ritual.

At present, if you find yourself at a standstill, the game offers the option to unveil the entire puzzle, pushing you to switch to a higher difficulty level and restart. But don’t worry! Below are incremental hints that will assist you in maneuvering through each difficulty level.

How to engage with Pips

If you’ve played dominoes before, you’ll recognize some aspects of how Pips operates. As we’ve discussed in our earlier hint articles about Pips, the tiles, similar to dominoes, can be arranged vertically or horizontally and link together. The key distinction between a conventional domino game and Pips is the color-coded requirements that must be fulfilled. The adjacent tiles aren’t required to necessarily correspond.

The criteria you need to fulfill are unique to the color-coded areas. For instance, if it shows a single digit, all edges of a tile in that area must total the indicated number. It is usual – and likely – for only a portion of a tile to lie within a color-coded area.

Below are typical scenarios you’ll face throughout the various difficulty levels:

• Number: All the pips in this section must sum up to the specified number.

• Equal: Each half of a domino in this section must contain the same amount of pips.

• Not Equal: Each half of a domino in this section must feature entirely different numbers of pips.

• Less than: Every half of a domino in this section must total to a number less than the provided value.

• Greater than: Every half of a domino in this section must total to a number greater than the specified value.

If a region lacks any color coding, it signifies no requirements for the domino portions within those areas.

Simple difficulty clues, solutions for Nov. 8 Pips

Number (1): Everything within this area must total to