NYT Pips Answers & Solve Guide — August 17, 2026
Board analysis, solving notes, and full solutions for all three difficulty levels.
This Day's Puzzle at a Glance
- Largest board: 13 dominoes across 26 cells.
- Condition mix: 6 exact-sum conditions, 1 upper-bound condition, 3 lower-bound conditions.
- Tightest number: 3; highest target 10.
- Total pips placed: 62 across the Hard board.
These figures are computed directly from the solution boards on this page — every number above describes the actual puzzle, so you can use them to reconstruct the solve step by step instead of guessing.
Solving Approach for This Board
Every Pips puzzle can be solved by pure deduction. Here is the order of operations that fits this specific board:
- The tightest number on the board is 3. Look for a single-cell region (or the smallest region) that can only be satisfied by a 3 or a blank half, and pin it down first.
- There is an upper-bound region capped at 3. With domino halves capped low, count how many pips that region's cells can actually accept before you place anything into it.
- A lower-bound region demands more than 10 pips. High dominoes such as 6-6, 6-5 or 6-4 are your only candidates there, which instantly tells you where the big pieces belong.
- Use the region conditions above as a checklist: satisfy the tightest constraints first, keep the unused domino set visible, and re-check the set after every placement. If a region stalls, list the few domino halves that could satisfy it and test only placements that also respect neighbouring regions.
Prefer working it out yourself? Scroll to the bottom of this page for the finished boards — each answer is shown only after you choose to reveal it, so you can compare your own deduction against the solution.
The Three Solution Boards
Easy
The entry-level board. A compact region set that rewards basic sum bookkeeping before anything else.
Solving notes for Easy
1 exact-sum condition, 2 upper-bound conditions
Anchor your first deduction on the 1 target — with such a small sum, the region can only take a blank half or a near-blank pair.
Easy boards are designed to teach one idea per puzzle. Time yourself, then repeat the same solve the next day to build speed.
Medium
A fuller board where region overlap starts to matter. Domino set tracking becomes the main skill.
Solving notes for Medium
1 exact-sum condition, 1 upper-bound condition, 2 lower-bound conditions
Anchor your first deduction on the 2 target — with such a small sum, the region can only take a blank half or a near-blank pair.
Medium boards punish premature placement: keep a running tally of used halves before committing a high domino to a region.
Hard
The largest grid of the day. Solving it cleanly requires corner anchoring, set tracking, and working in thirds.
Solving notes for Hard
6 exact-sum conditions, 1 upper-bound condition, 3 lower-bound conditions
Anchor your first deduction on the 3 target — with such a small sum, the region can only take a blank half or a near-blank pair.
For the Hard board, mark the corners first. Corner cells have the fewest legal orientations, and each forced corner domino eliminates whole families of placements from the remaining set.
Practice on a Live Solver
Prefer to experiment instead of reading? The interactive Pips solver on this site generates and solves puzzle boards in your browser — a great way to test the techniques above before you apply them to the daily game.
Try the Interactive Solver