Pips hints for Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Pips is a domino-placement logic puzzle. You’re given a set of dominoes and a board divided into colored regions, and you must place every domino so that each region satisfies its rule. The pips (dots) on the domino halves are the values you’re arranging — the whole puzzle is about making the numbers in each region obey its constraint.

Like Sudoku, there’s exactly one valid arrangement, so every placement is a deduction, not a guess — if you’re guessing, there’s usually a forced move you’ve missed.

Each region carries a rule, and recognizing the type tells you how to attack it:

• Sum regions — the pips in the region must add up to a target. Start here; they’re the most constraining.
• Equal regions — every cell in the region must hold the same value. These pin down dominoes fast once one cell is known.
• Comparison regions (greater/less than) — values must increase or stay within a relationship; use them to order placements.
• Empty / blank constraints — some regions must total zero or stay unfilled, which removes options elsewhere.

Begin with the most constrained regions — a small sum region with a high or very low target often has only one or two legal domino values. Place those, then use the half-values they lock in to constrain neighboring regions.

Because a domino spans two cells (often two regions), each placement does double duty: it satisfies one region while feeding a known value into the next. Chain these forced placements rather than scanning the whole board repeatedly.

Pips ships in easy, medium, and hard each day. Easy boards have small regions and generous constraints, so direct deduction clears them. Hard boards layer overlapping regions where a single domino’s two halves must satisfy two different rules at once — there you’ll lean on elimination (“this value can’t go here, so it must go there”) more than direct placement.

List the dominoes you have left and the values each open region still needs. The intersection is usually tiny. If a region needs a value no remaining domino can supply in that orientation, an earlier placement was wrong — back up rather than forcing it.

A new Pips puzzle is published daily in all three difficulties.