{
  "id": 2802267,
  "title": "NYT Pips hints, answers for August 23, 2026",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/23/nyt-pips-hints-answers-for-august-23-2026",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-08-23T14:01:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Mashable",
    "slug": "mashable",
    "url": "https://mashable.com/entertainment/pips-nyt-games-hints-answers-easy-medium-hard-august-23-2026"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Welcome to your guide for Pips, the latest game from the New York Times. Released in August 2025, Pips offers a unique single-player experience with dominoes-inspired gameplay. If you get stuck, piecemeal hints are available to help you progress through each difficulty level.\n\nTo play Pips, you'll place tiles vertically or horizontally, with the main difference being color-coded conditions. These conditions dictate specific rules for the tiles within each space, such as the sum of the pips, matching numbers, or inequalities. Areas without color coding have no restrictions on the tiles.\n\nFor the Easy difficulty, some hints include:\n- Less Than (4): Place a horizontally positioned 6-5.\n- Number (4): Place a horizontally positioned 4-6.\n- Equal (6): Place two horizontally positioned 4-6 tiles.\n- Equal (2): Place two horizontally positioned 3-2 and 2-5 tiles.\n- Greater Than (5): Place a horizontally positioned 0-6.\n\nMedium difficulty hints include:\n- Greater Than (1): Place a horizontally positioned 5-2.\n- Number (4): Place two horizontally positioned 5-2 and 0-2 tiles.\n- Equal (5): Place a vertically positioned 5-0 and 5-4 tile.\n- Number (4): Place a vertically positioned 5-4 and a horizontally positioned 3-0 tile.\n- Equal (3): Place two vertically positioned 3-3 and 3-0 tiles.\n- Equal (1): Place a vertically positioned 1-1 tile.\n\nHard difficulty hints consist of:\n- Number (4): Place a horizontally positioned 4-6 and 5-0 tile.\n- Number (8): Place a horizontally positioned 5-0 and a vertically positioned 3-1 tile.\n- Number (7): Place a horizontally positioned 4-6 and a vertically positioned 1-5 tile.\n- Number (5): Place a vertically positioned 1-5 tile.\n- Number (3): Place vertically positioned 3-1 and 2-0 tiles.\n- Number (12): Place horizontally positioned 0-6 and 6-1 tiles, or vertically positioned 2-0 and 6-6 tiles.\n- Number (9): Place a horizontally positioned 6-1 and a vertically positioned 4-4 tile.\n\nFor additional puzzles, check out Mashable's games hub featuring Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.",
  "summary": "The New York Times' latest game, Pips, brings domino fun to your desktop. How to play Pips as well as hints in case you get stuck.",
  "key_points": [
    "Pips, a dominoes-inspired game, released in August 2025",
    "Easy hints guide placement of specific pip combinations",
    "Hard difficulty hints involve larger pip totals and varied orientations"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}