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For Saturday, September 5, 2026, the NYT Pips archives list three separate puzzles: Easy #1211, Medium #1215, and Hard #1228. Use the progressive Hard hints below if you want a nudge; the complete placement sequence is behind a spoiler warning. The available archives do not establish orientation-verified full solutions for Easy or Medium.
September 5, 2026 Pips puzzles
The three difficulty labels refer to different boards, not three levels of hints for one board. NYT Game Solver’s 2026 archive reports these board sizes; Daily Game Answers lists the puzzle numbers and attributes the constructors by difficulty. These are third-party archive listings, not direct confirmation from the New York Times.
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| Difficulty | Puzzle number | Dominoes | Regions | Constructor attribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | #1211 | 5 | 7 | Ian Livengood (Daily Game Answers, 2026) |
| Medium | #1215 | 7 | 9 | Rodolfo Kurchan (Daily Game Answers, 2026) |
| Hard | #1228 | 12 | 15 | Rodolfo Kurchan (Daily Game Answers, 2026) |
Sources: NYT Game Solver’s September 5 archive and Daily Game Answers’ September 5 archive.
How to use the hints
Pips is a domino-placement logic puzzle: place each domino so its two halves occupy adjacent cells, while meeting the clue for every region. Depending on the clue, a region may require an exact sum, equal values, a value above or below a threshold, or have no constraint. A domino can cross a boundary, so check the rule for each half’s region separately; the color is a grouping aid, while the clue determines what is legal.
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The hints below follow one archived Hard-board placement sequence. Stop at any step if you want to keep solving. The labels such as teal and orange refer to the regions in the archived guide; use the clue text on your board to identify them.
Progressive hints for Hard #1228
- Start with the 4–1 domino: put 4 in the teal region requiring a value greater than 3, and 1 in the blue region requiring less than 3.
- Place the 2–5 domino so its halves go into the two regions that each require a sum of 5.
- For 3–5, put 3 in the orange sum-3 region and 5 in the purple equal-values region.
- Use 3–3 across the green greater-than-2 region and the orange sum-15 region.
- Place 2–6 with 2 in the green greater-than-1 region and 6 in the blue greater-than-3 region.
- Put the 1–2 domino in the teal sum-3 region.
- For 3–0, put 3 in the purple sum-5 region and 0 in an unconstrained cell.
- For 6–0, put 6 in the pink sum-15 region and 0 in an unconstrained cell.
Spoiler warning: complete Hard #1228 answer below
The remaining placements complete the archived sequence. Together with the first eight hints, they account for all 12 dominoes.
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Final four placements
- Place 6–6 in the orange sum-15 region.
- Put 4–5 in the pink sum-15 region.
- For 1–5, put 1 in an unconstrained cell and 5 in the purple equal-values region.
- Place 5–5 in the purple equal-values region.
The full Hard sequence is from WordHint’s September 5, 2026 walkthrough, a third-party solver page. PuzzleHints’ archived guide offers additional board context and solving rationale.
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The archives identify the Easy and Medium puzzle numbers and report their board sizes, but the available text does not establish their tile orientations well enough to publish complete placements reliably. Their identifiers are useful for matching the date’s boards, but a sequence of domino values without verified positions could be misleading.
Quick Recap
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