The NYT Pips puzzle dated Friday, October 31, 2025, is Puzzle #75. Pips asks you to place every domino on the board so each colored region meets its condition. The date-matched published guide provides answer images for Easy and Medium, plus a written walkthrough for Hard.
How the October 31 Pips puzzle works
Each domino covers two squares. Use every domino, and satisfy the condition shown in each colored region. A region may require equal values, different values, an exact value or sum, or a total below or above a threshold. Squares without a condition can contain any value.
A domino may cross a region boundary. Each half counts only toward the condition for the region containing that half’s square. For example, if one half lies in an exact-sum region and the other lies in a different region, each value is evaluated separately against its own region’s rule.
For general solving strategy, the independent EnergyPips rules guide recommends bounding exact-sum regions first, considering constrained doubles, filling forced regions, checking that every empty square still has an empty neighbor, and leaving less-than and greater-than regions until later: EnergyPips Pips rules and strategy.
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Spoilers: October 31, 2025 solutions
Warning: The placements below reveal the Hard board’s solution. The date-matched Forbes guide includes answer images for Easy and Medium, but its retrieved written text does not specify their tile placements. This walkthrough therefore does not guess or transcribe those boards.
Easy and Medium
Forbes’ October 30, 2025 guide shows answer images for the October 31 Easy and Medium boards. Its written explanation covers Hard; the text available for those two boards does not list their domino placements. See the date-matched Forbes guide for the images.
Hard walkthrough
The Hard board has nine dominoes. The published walkthrough identifies a Purple 16 region and a Blue all-equal group. Follow its placements in this order:
- Place 5/5 at the top of the Purple 16 region.
- Place 1/5 below the 5/5.
- Put 2/0 in the Orange < 2 region.
- Move 2/6 from Pink > 1 into Blue 6.
- Place 6/6 in the next two Blue all-equal squares.
- Place 4/4 in the two Dark Blue all-equal squares.
- Place 6/4 from Blue = into Dark Blue =.
- Place 6/1 from Blue = into the second free tile.
- Place 4/1 from Green > 3 into the final free tile.
These are the source guide’s placements; they have not been independently tested here. Erik Kain, the Forbes Senior Contributor, described the board as “very easy.”
A practical way to approach similar boards
For future Pips puzzles, start with regions that sharply limit the possible values, then use those constraints to identify forced domino placements. Keep track of region boundaries: the two halves of one domino can be subject to different rules. Before committing a placement, make sure it does not leave an uncovered square without an available neighboring square for a domino.
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