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For the Sunday, January 25, 2026 NYT Pips puzzle, the available text walkthrough covers the Hard tier. Its regions all require equal pip values. The walkthrough below follows the placements described by Forbes Senior Contributor Erik Kain; use the board image alongside the directions because the text does not give full grid coordinates. Spoilers ahead.
Hard-tier hints
The Hard board has six equality groups: one containing five tiles, two containing four, two containing three, and one containing two. It also has three free tiles. The key deduction is to build the Purple group with 5s and the Pink group with 6s; the available dominoes make those assignments workable. The remaining equal-value groups can then be filled with the available 0, 1, 2, and 3 tiles.
Pips asks you to fill the colored grid using every domino while meeting each region’s rule. Depending on the board, a region may require matching or different values, a greater-than or less-than relationship, or an exact total; unconstrained tiles can hold any value. Dominoes can be rotated, and a board may permit more than one valid arrangement. Kain notes that some puzzles have only one solution, while others have two or more.
Hard-tier answer and placement walkthrough
Follow the directions relative to the colored regions on the board. This sequence is reported in Kain’s January 24 walkthrough, rather than independently verified here.
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- Fill the 0 groups: Place the 0/0 domino vertically in the two rightmost Dark Blue equality tiles. Put 0/3 in Orange and 0/1 in Green.
- Complete the Orange and Green placements: Put 3/3 in the adjacent Orange tiles and 1/1 in Green below it. Place 3/4 from Orange into the first free tile.
- Build Pink and Purple: Place 6/6 vertically in the two right Pink tiles. Put 6/5 from Pink into Purple, then place 3/5 from a free tile into Purple.
- Finish the remaining groups: Put 5/5 in Purple, 2/2 in Blue, and 5/4 from Purple into the third free tile.
Kain says the 5/4 and 3/5 dominoes can be swapped without changing the solution.
What is established for Easy and Medium
The accessible text of the cited Forbes guide shows Easy and Medium solutions as images but does not transcribe their placements. A second January 25 guide also presents its tier walkthroughs as images without readable placement text. Exact Easy and Medium layouts are therefore not established here; the Hard answer above should not be treated as a solution for those tiers.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Source
The Hard-tier placements, board counts, rules summary, and tier limitation are drawn from Erik Kain’s Forbes walkthrough, published January 24, 2026.
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