NYT Pips Solver

What Is Pips?

Pips is a daily domino logic puzzle from The New York Times, launched in August 2025. You get a board of cells grouped into colored regions and a tray of dominoes. Every cell must be covered by exactly one domino half, and every region’s condition must hold: a number means the pips (the dots on the domino halves) in that region sum to exactly that value; “=” means all pips in the region are equal; “≠” means all different; “<” and “>” bound the region’s sum. A domino may span two regions — each half counts toward its own region — and touching dominoes do not need matching ends. Each day has an Easy, Medium and Hard board.

How to Use the Pips Solver

1. Set the grid size to fit the puzzle, then paint the board: select a region color, choose its condition, and click cells. Cells you leave unpainted are not part of the board — irregular shapes are fine.
2. Enter every domino from the tray as a two-value chip (0–6 pips per half). The count readout tells you when cells and dominoes match up.
3. Click Solve. A valid placement is drawn directly on the board — outlined pairs are dominoes, numbers are pips.
4. Compare with your game — or use the Example button first to see how a finished setup looks.

How the Solver Works

The solver runs a classic backtracking search with constraint pruning. It scans for the first uncovered cell (row by row), tries pairing it with the free cell to its right or below, and attempts each unused domino in both orientations. Before committing a pip value to a cell, it checks the cell’s region: a sum region is pruned the moment its partial total exceeds the target (or can no longer reach it, since each remaining cell adds at most 6); an equals region rejects any second value; a ≠ region rejects duplicates; < and > regions are bounded the same way. Because bad branches die early, even 8×8 boards with a dozen dominoes solve in milliseconds.

Worked Example

Click Example to load a 2×3 board. The purple region (left column) demands all pips equal — only the 3-3 double can fill it. The amber single cell must sum to 1, so the 5-1 domino must end there with its 1; that forces its 5 into the blue region. Blue needs a total of 11, and 5 leaves 6 for the 2-4 domino: 2 + 4 = 6. Every real Pips board unwinds the same way — one forced region at a time.

Solving Order Strategy

• Start with “=” regions. They usually need doubles or matching halves — the scarcest resources in the tray.
• Then tight sums. A 3-cell region that must sum to 2 or 3, or a single-cell region with an exact number, admits very few pip combinations.
• Count your extremes. Zeros and sixes are limited; regions with very low or very high targets tell you exactly where they go.
• Watch the geometry. An odd-shaped corner cell often has only one neighbor, forcing a domino’s direction before you think about pips at all.
• Leave “no condition” regions for last — they absorb whatever dominoes remain.

Frequently Asked Questions