Spoilers: These progressive hints are for the NYT Pips Hard puzzle dated October 6, 2026, listed in the answer archive as Hard #1339. Stop before the placement table if you want to solve it yourself; the table gives the complete archived solution.
How to approach the Hard board
Pips is a domino-placement logic puzzle: fill the board with the available dominoes while satisfying the condition shown in each region. Depending on the region, that can mean matching values, using distinct values, reaching an exact sum, or making a sum greater than or less than a target. The game explainer also says every domino must be used.
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Hint 1: Check the coverage
The archived solution contains 13 dominoes. Since each domino covers two squares, use the tile count as a coverage check while solving: all 26 squares must be filled, with no tile left over.
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Prioritize regions with a narrow set of possible values, especially where a value appears only once or twice among the tiles still available. Keep track of which values and tiles you have committed so that a locally plausible placement does not leave a region impossible to complete.
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Hint 3: Use doubles as candidates, not assumptions
For a region requiring equal values, test available doubles first. Then check whether those placements still allow adjacent exact-sum or inequality regions to meet their conditions. These are general tactics, not a verified forced opening sequence for this specific board.
Complete solution for Hard #1339
The October 6 answer archive lists the following 13 placements. Coordinates use the archive’s [row,column] notation, with rows and columns beginning at 0. The two pip values are shown in the same order as the two cells listed for each domino.
| Domino | First cell | Second cell |
|---|---|---|
| 2–4 | [4,7] | [3,7] |
| 4–0 | [4,4] | [3,4] |
| 6–6 | [3,2] | [4,2] |
| 3–3 | [0,0] | [0,1] |
| 4–4 | [2,6] | [2,7] |
| 1–2 | [0,4] | [0,5] |
| 2–5 | [0,6] | [0,7] |
| 3–4 | [1,0] | [2,0] |
| 4–5 | [1,4] | [2,4] |
| 4–6 | [3,0] | [4,0] |
| 3–6 | [2,1] | [2,2] |
| 2–6 | [0,2] | [1,2] |
| 2–2 | [4,5] | [4,6] |
The coordinate list is transcribed from TECHi’s dated answer archive; it is not an independently replayed or tested solution. The archive supplies placements rather than a separate reasoning walkthrough, so the hints above should not be read as proof that any particular move is forced.
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What the complexity result does—and does not—mean
A paper in the FUN 2026 proceedings, Man, These New York Times Games Are Hard! A Computational Perspective, states that “deciding whether a Pips puzzle has a solution is NP-Complete.” That result concerns the generalized problem across arbitrary instances. It does not show that this daily board has multiple solutions, that it has a unique solution, or that it has a particular difficulty rating.
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