For Monday, January 5, 2026, the NYT Pips answer guide covers Easy, Medium, and Hard. The documented Hard walkthrough below spells “Up.” Exact Easy and Medium domino placements are not transcribed in the available sources, so they are not guessed here.
How to use these Pips hints
Pips asks you to place every domino on the grid while meeting the condition shown in each colored region. Depending on the region, that can mean matching a number exactly, making all pips equal or unequal, or satisfying a greater-than or less-than rule. Check the symbol and condition on the board itself; number-region rules are described as requiring the displayed total. Forbes summarizes the objective: “You must use every domino and achieve every condition properly to win.” Forbes’ January 5 guide notes that a board may have more than one solution, so the sequence below is a documented walkthrough, not a claim of uniqueness.
Easy and Medium answers
Daze Puzzle lists Easy, Medium, and Hard answers for January 5, but its readable text does not give the Easy or Medium placements. Because the solution images are not available as readable placement text, exact domino sequences for those boards cannot be verified here. Daze Puzzle’s January 5 answer page identifies the three difficulty boards.
Hard answer: the board spells “Up”
The Forbes walkthrough describes the Hard board as the word “Up.” Its opening deduction is that each side has two regions totaling 11: two regions contain two cells and two contain three. Each two-cell 11 region therefore needs 5 and 6. On the U, the pink region marked less than 1 needs a blank.
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U: fill the first constrained regions
- Place 4/4 in the top two cells of the purple 11 region.
- Place 3/1 from the purple 11 region into the pink 1 region.
- Place 0/6 from the pink 1 region into the blue 11 region.
- Place 5/1 from the blue 11 region into the orange 1 region.
P: complete the equal region and continue the 11 region
- Place 3/3 in the bottom two cells of the green 11 region.
- Place 5/2 from the green 11 region into the dark-blue equal region, then use 2/2 to complete that equal group.
- Place 5/5 from the orange greater-than-1 region into the blue 11 region.
Finish the remaining cells
- Place 6/1 from the blue 11 region into the first free cell.
- Place 0/1 from the pink less-than-1 region into the second free cell.
- Place 1/1 into the third and fourth free cells.
This placement order is reported in Forbes’ date-specific walkthrough. The free-cell sequence is specific to this board, not a general Pips rule.
Quick Recap
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