The Proof Desk · Pips
How to solve today’s NYT Pips — July 28, 2026
duplixo publishes its own free daily Pips — same rules, unlimited practice — alongside the solving method below. This is not the official NYT puzzle, and duplixo is not affiliated with the New York Times. For the exact daily board, play on the NYT app; to learn the method or get unlimited practice, you are in the right place.
How to solve today’s Pips
duplixo’s free daily Pips for July 28, 2026 is a 10-cell board split into five regions — all different, all equal, over 6, under 5, totals 10. Tile it with the five dominoes so every region’s rule holds at once. The tightest rules pin the board first; five graduated hints sit below and the worked solution is revealed further down.
Need a nudge? Five graduated hints
Hint 1 Read the badges Reveal
Each region carries a rule: the Amber region must be all equal. Rules like “all equal” and a low total are the tightest, so start there.
Hint 2 The tray Reveal
You have five dominoes to place: [3|4], [2|2], [2|3], [3|5], [1|5]. The double [2|2] is the only way to satisfy any “all equal” region.
Hint 3 Cross the borders Reveal
No domino sits inside a single region — each one straddles two, so placing it commits a value to both rules at once. Use that to rule out orientations.
Hint 4 A forced placement Reveal
The domino at row 1, column 1–row 2, column 1 reads [3|4] in the solution. Once the tightest region is fixed, the rest cascade.
Hint 5 The solved values Reveal
Reading the board left to right, top to bottom, the pip values are 3, 2, 2, 2, 4, 3, 1, 3, 5, 5.
A worked solution: our daily Pips, solved
Reveal the solved board Hide the solved board
Today’s Pips solution — the board fully tiled with every region rule satisfied. The five dominoes are 3-4, 2-2, 2-3, 3-5, 1-5, each straddling a region border so it answers to two rules at once.
How NYT Pips works
Pips is a tiling puzzle. A board of connected cells is divided into coloured regions, and you must cover the whole board with the dominoes in the tray — each domino lying across two touching cells — so that every region satisfies the rule printed in its corner.
Those rules come in a few flavours: a plain number means the pips in the region must total exactly that; <N and >N mean the total must stay under or climb over a value; = means all the pip values in the region match; and ≠ means they must all differ. Because a single domino often straddles two regions, every piece you lay has to answer to both sides at once — which is where the deduction lives.
Today’s board, by difficulty
| Indicator | Estimate |
|---|---|
| Estimated solve rate | 45% |
| Typical solve time | 2:12 |
| Likely to need a hint | 37% |
| Regions on the board | 5 |
| Difficulty vs a typical board | Harder · 32th pct |
How we build this. The Pips board on this page is generated by duplixo and run through our solver to confirm it is valid before it is published. The figures above are modelled difficulty indicators for that board — derived from its structure, not measured from player sessions or taken from the official NYT puzzle.
Reading today’s Pips
| Date | Puzzle | Result |
|---|---|---|
| July 28, 2026 | No. 345 | 45% solvedToday |
| July 27, 2026 | No. 344 | 55% solved |
| July 26, 2026 | No. 343 | 73% solved |
| July 25, 2026 | No. 342 | 64% solved |
| July 24, 2026 | No. 341 | 69% solved |
| July 23, 2026 | No. 340 | 73% solved |
| July 22, 2026 | No. 339 | 63% solved |
| July 21, 2026 | No. 338 | 44% solved |
Pips answer FAQ
Can a Pips puzzle have more than one solution?
No. Each daily Pips board is built to have exactly one valid way to lay the dominoes so every region rule is met. Our generator runs the board through an exhaustive backtracking solver before publishing to confirm the tiling is unique, so the board above is the only answer.
Do the dominoes have to match the region colours?
No. The coloured regions only carry the rules — a target sum, all-equal, all-different, or a less-than / greater-than comparison. A single domino often lies across the border between two regions, so it must help satisfy both at once.
What do the symbols in each Pips region mean?
A plain number means the pips in that region must total exactly that number. <N means the total must stay under N and >N means it must exceed N. = means every pip value in the region is the same, and ≠ means they must all be different. A blank region has no constraint.
Is there an archive of past Pips puzzles?
Yes. The New York Times keeps no Pips archive, so we do — a dated record of previous boards and their solved tilings, plus an unlimited practice mode that generates fresh, solvable boards whenever you want more, each checked by the same solver.
Is this the official NYT Pips board?
No. duplixo publishes its own free Pips board every day, with the same rules and unlimited practice, plus this how-to-solve guide and a worked solution. It is independent of the New York Times and not affiliated with it. For the exact official daily puzzle, play on the NYT app; to learn the method or practise without limits, you are in the right place.
Learned the method? Now beat the clock.
Every domino here bridges two regions, so no piece answers to a single rule — that is what makes Pips deceptively tight. Placing one tile commits a value on both sides of a border, and a wrong orientation shows up two rules away.
The clean route is to solve the Amber region and any low-total or all-equal rules first, since those admit the fewest values; the comparison and all-different regions then fall out with almost no guessing.