NYT Pips hints, answers for August 22, 2026

Welcome to your guide for Pips, the captivating new game from the New York Times released in August 2025. This single-player experience brings a fresh twist to the classic dominoes, making it a potential daily gaming staple. However, if you're stuck, you're in luck! We've got you covered with piecemeal hints to guide you through each difficulty level.

To play Pips, just like traditional dominoes, you'll place tiles vertically or horizontally and connect them. The main difference lies in the color-coded conditions you must meet. These conditions aren't necessarily about matching numbers, but rather specific criteria for the spaces they occupy.

For the easy difficulty, if a space is marked with a number, all the pips within that space must add up to that number. An equal condition requires all domino halves in the space to be the same number. Not Equal means every domino half must have a different number. Less than and Greater than spaces require sums that are lower or higher than a given number.Spaces without color coding have no conditions.

In the medium difficulty, you'll encounter spaces marked with Less Than (4), Equal (4), Greater Than (3), Equal (1), Less Than (2), and Less Than (4). These conditions require specific sums or comparisons between the pips in the space.

For the hard difficulty, expect a mix of Number spaces (adding up to specific totals), Equal spaces (requiring identical numbers), and Less Than and Greater Than spaces. The answers involve carefully placed domino halves to meet these challenging conditions.

With these hints, you're well-equipped to navigate through the various difficulty levels of Pips and enjoy this unique dominoes-inspired game from the New York Times.