There are three NYT Pips boards for Sunday, February 1, 2026: Easy, Medium, and Hard. The dated guides disagree on the puzzle number, so use the date and board clues—not a number such as #167 or #168—to identify this set. The hints below describe reported key deductions, not a complete cell-by-cell solution map.
How to identify the February 1 puzzle
Some guides label this set #168, while another calls it #167. Because the numbering is inconsistent, confirm that you have the Sunday, February 1, 2026 boards and the matching clues and domino bank before using a hint. The guides cover Easy, Medium, and Hard. See the dated walkthroughs from source one and source two.
How NYT Pips works
Pips is a domino-placement logic game: cover every board cell with one half of a supplied domino, using each domino exactly once, while satisfying the clues in the colored regions. Clues can require a precise sum, equal or distinct values, or a sum above or below a threshold. When a domino crosses a region boundary, count each half only in the region it occupies. That means one placement can affect two clues at once. The formal analysis of Pips describes the game’s mechanics; Tom’s Guide’s rules overview explains how to play.
Easy hints
The dated guides report an exact-zero region, exact-six regions, a greater-than-four region, and equality regions. The listed tiles include 5–0, 6–0, 4–0, 3–3, and 6–4.
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- Use the 3–3 double as a starting point for the central equality clue.
- Pay close attention to blank-containing dominoes: a blank is zero, so these tiles can help satisfy both the zero clue and nearby total constraints.
- The 6–4 domino is reported vertically on the right, contributing to the right-side exact-six clue and the neighboring equality structure.
- For every crossing tile, count only the half inside the region you are checking.
These clues narrow the options but do not establish every tile position. The guides’ text does not provide a complete coordinate-by-coordinate arrangement.
Medium hints
The reported clues include a blue region with a sum below two, a central not-equal region, a pink equality region, a greater-than-three region, and exact-four and exact-five regions. Listed dominoes include 6–6, 3–5, 5–5, 0–0, 2–3, 6–4, and 3–3.
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- Begin with the below-two region; its strict limit makes the low-value tiles especially relevant.
- Consider the equality and not-equal regions together. The 5–5 double is central to the equality structure, but a double wholly inside a not-equal region cannot satisfy that clue.
- The guides identify 6–6 on the left and 6–4 on the right.
- Check the exact-four and exact-five totals using only the half or halves that fall inside each region.
The text walkthroughs do not establish a full cell arrangement, so these are deductions and placement clues rather than a verified complete map.
Hard hints
The Hard board has exact-12 and exact-six regions, several low-threshold regions (<3, <4, <5, <7, and <9), and a broader region marked <20. The reported tile bank includes both high-value pieces and doubles as well as low-value tiles.
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- Protect zeroes and ones for the strict low-threshold regions; using them too early elsewhere can leave a threshold clue impossible to meet.
- Reserve higher values for the exact-total regions, where their contribution can be controlled.
- After placing a domino that crosses a boundary, recheck both affected regions before committing to the next move.
The dated guides support this strategy but do not provide enough textual detail to verify a complete placement map. Treat any purported exact arrangement as unconfirmed unless it matches the visual solution for this dated board.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the three boards have in common
Each difficulty is a different balance of tile values and region constraints: Easy emphasizes blanks, exact totals, and a double; Medium combines a low threshold with equality and inequality clues; Hard asks you to conserve low values while meeting exact totals. In every case, the key habit is to track each domino half separately when a tile spans two regions.
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The game’s underlying constraint problem is mathematically demanding: the cited paper proves that deciding whether a Pips puzzle is solvable is NP-complete, even for a restricted class of instances. This is a theoretical result about the problem, not a statistic about the February 1 boards.
Quick Recap
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