Pips answers archive

November 2026 (4)

October 2026 (31)

September 2026 (4)

The window in numbers

These counts come from the same Times data each archive page is drawn from.

In the Times' words

The Times describes Pips in one line on its game page, and the archive is a record of how that promise plays out day after day. Every board in it has a single published solution, every domino has a cell, and every region condition is met by the numbers shown.

"Every domino has a spot" is literally true of the published solutions: on all 99 boards in the window, the dominoes in the tray exactly cover the board, with no cell left over and no domino left out. That is what HintSheet's pre-publication check confirms for each board, along with every region total.

Every domino has a spot. Can you find where each belongs?— The New York Times, Pips game page (read 29 October 2026)

How to use the archive

Pick a month below or a date in the list. Each dated page shows the easy, medium and hard boards solved, in that order, with the domino list and region check under each. To compare your own attempt, the region check is the quickest route: find your stuck region and read one line.

Dated pages are for reference and are kept out of search results. This archive page is the one that lists them all.

Week by week

Hard boards grew more fragmented through October. The average hard board held 17.4 regions in the week from 27 September and 22.4 in the five days from 25 October, while the number of dominoes stayed between 13.6 and 15.0. Medium boards barely moved.

Patterns you will notice reading back

Hard boards in this window lean heavily on one-cell sums. 71% of hard regions were sums and 73% were single cells, against 57% and 52% across the game's full history. In practice a recent hard board is a long list of small fixed clues, not a few large ones.

Medium boards use comparison badges more than either neighbour. Greater-than (17.8%) and less-than (17.1%) badges together make up more than a third of medium regions, against about a quarter on easy boards and an eighth on hard ones. The only "not equal" regions in the window appeared on medium and hard boards. None of the 33 easy boards used one.

The largest and smallest boards

Within the window the easy board was nearly always five dominoes. The one exception was 4 October 2026, with four. Medium was seven dominoes on 29 of 33 dates and eight on the other four (27 September and 8, 12 and 15 October). Hard varied the most: ten boards used the full 16 dominoes, the most recent on 28 October, and the smallest was 19 October with ten.

Doubles varied as much. Seven easy boards and six hard boards had no double at all. The most on a single board was four, on nine hard boards, the first on 27 September 2026 and the latest on 26 October. A board without doubles has no easy wins in its equal regions, and every equal cell must be matched across two dominoes.

Two styles on the medium board

Because medium is the one level two constructors share, it is where their habits can be compared. In the window, Ian Livengood's 13 medium boards and Rodolfo Kurchan's 20 were almost the same size (7.3 and 7.0 dominoes on average). They used conditions differently, though.

What the comparison means for solving

On Livengood's medium boards, look for equal regions and the doubles that fill them. One region in five was an equal. Kurchan's medium boards had more empty space and every not-equal region in the window, which tends to leave the final placements open until late. Each dated page names the constructor of every board, so you can see which style you are facing before you start. These are counts from one month, not rules, and the pattern may change.

How a dated page is laid out

Each dated page follows the same order, so you can jump straight to what you need. At the top are the date and the editor's credit. Then come the three boards, easy, medium and hard, each with its constructor in the heading. Under every solved board there are two lists. The first gives where each domino goes, in the order the Times' data stores them, with both halves' cells. The second gives every non-empty region with its cells, its condition and the numbers that meet it.

Arrows at the foot of each dated page step to the previous and next published date. The final arrow goes to today's answers instead of a future date, because future dates do not exist on HintSheet until midnight Eastern on the day.

Who built the boards in the window

Ian Livengood built all 33 easy boards, and Rodolfo Kurchan all 33 hard ones. Medium was split: Kurchan 20, Livengood 13. Livengood is also the editor on every date. Each dated page credits the constructor of each board.

Reading a past date against your own attempt

If you played an older board in the game's Past Puzzles section and want to check it, open that date here and go to the board's region check. Lines are in the Times' region order, and each lists its cells, its condition and the numbers that satisfy it. Matching your board region by region finds a mistake faster than comparing whole boards cell by cell.

If your numbers differ from ours but every condition still holds, you have probably found one of the alternative arrangements. Between 27 September and 29 October 2026 they existed on most medium and hard boards. The archive always shows the Times' own solution, so a difference is not necessarily an error.

What the archive does not include

HintSheet's archive starts on 27 September 2026, the date of the oldest entry we published when Pips coverage began. Earlier puzzles are in the Times' own Past Puzzles section of the game. The statistics for the whole history since 18 August 2025, on the Pips guide, were counted from the Times' data but are not republished here date by date.

The archive also leaves out the tray as the game shows it and any timing or streak information. It holds the boards and their published solutions only.

Where the data comes from

Each date's three boards are read from the Times' own Pips data, one file per date, which includes the regions, the tray and the published solution. Before publishing, every placement is re-checked against every region condition. A board that failed would be skipped, not shown wrong, and none has failed. Boards go live at midnight Eastern on their date.

Other archives

Past answers for the other Times puzzles are kept the same way: the Mini Crossword archive, the Connections archive, the Wordle archive and the Strands archive. The site-wide archive lists every game.

Frequently asked questions