Struggling with the Easy, Medium, or Hard levels? We have all the solutions for you.
Welcome to the Pips guide, the latest game in the New York Times collection. Launched in August 2025, Pips brings a fresh twist to dominoes, offering a fun single-player experience that might become your daily gaming routine.
Currently, if you’re stuck, the game only reveals the entire puzzle, making you move to the next difficulty and start anew. But, we’ve got you covered! Below are step-by-step hints to guide you through each difficulty level.
How to Play Pips
If you’ve played dominoes, you’ll find Pips familiar. As we’ve noted in our previous hints, tiles are placed vertically or horizontally, connecting with each other. The key difference is Pips’ color-coded conditions. Touching tiles don’t have to match.
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Specific conditions depend on the color-coded spaces. If there’s a single number, every tile side in that space must add up to it. It’s common for only half a tile to be in a color-coded space.
Common examples across difficulty levels:
– Number: The pips in this area must sum up to the number.
– Equal: Every domino half here must have the same number of pips.
– Not Equal: Every domino half here must differ in pips.
– Less than: Every domino half here must sum less than the specified number.
– Greater than: Every domino half here must sum more than the specified number.
Areas with no color coding have no conditions on domino portions within them.
SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for March 23, 2026
Easy Difficulty Hints for March 23 Pips
– Number (1): Sum equals 1. Use 1-3 vertically.
– Equal (0): Equals 0. Use 0-4 vertically; 0-0 horizontally.
– Equal (4): Equals 4. Use 0-4 vertically; 4-5 horizontally.
– Equal (5): Equals 5. Use 4-5 horizontally; 5-1 vertically.
– Number (1): Sum equals 1. Use 5-1 vertically.
Medium Difficulty Hints for March 23 Pips
– Number (6): Sum equals 6. Use 2-4 horizontally; 4-1 vertically.
– Number (10): Sum equals 10. Use 2-4 horizontally; 3-3 horizontally.
– Number (2): Sum equals 2. Use 4-1 vertically; 1-5 horizontally.
– Number (5): Sum equals 5. Use 2-3 horizontally.
– Number (10): Sum equals 10. Use 1-5 horizontally; 5-3 horizontally.
Hard Difficulty Hints for March 23 Pips
– Number (6): Sum equals 6. Use 6-0 vertically.
– Number (3): Sum equals 2. Use 2-1 horizontally; 6-0 vertically.
– Number (4): Sum equals 4. Use 0-2 horizontally; 2-6 vertically.
– Number (6): Sum equals 6. Use 2-6 vertically.
– Number (2): Sum equals 2. Use 1-0 horizontally; 1-6 vertically.
– Number (12): Sum equals 12. Use 4-1 horizontally; 4-4 horizontally.
– Number (1): Sum equals 1. Use 4-1 horizontally; 0-3 vertically.
– Number (10): Sum equals 10. Use 3-4 horizontally; 6-4 vertically.
– Number (4): Sum equals 4. Use 6-4 vertically.
– Number (16): Sum equals 16. Use 1-6 vertically; 5-5 vertically.
– Equal (3): Equals 3. Use 0-3 vertically; 3-3 vertically.
If you want more puzzles, Mashable now offers games! Check our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.