How to Play Pips

How to play pips, in the order you actually need it: what you are looking at, what the badges are telling you, where to put the first domino, and what to do when a region goes red. If you want the rules stated formally rather than demonstrated, the pips rules page does that instead.

By Sukie · Puzzle editor

Published August 22, 2025 · Updated September 12, 2026

Step 1 — Read the board first

Before touching a tile, spend fifteen seconds on two questions: how many squares are there, and which region is the most restrictive? The square count tells you how many dominoes you have (always exactly half), and the tightest region tells you where the puzzle will actually be decided.

New players almost always start at the top-left corner because that is where reading starts. It is usually the worst square on the board — an unconstrained corner tells you nothing, so anything you place there is a guess you will have to unwind.

Step 2 — Find the region with the fewest legal fillings

Not the smallest region — the most constrained one. The quick test for an exact-sum region is to divide the target by the number of squares:

• An average near 0 or near 6 is extremely tight. A = 12 over two squares can only be 6 and 6.
• An average near 3 is loose. A = 6 over two squares allows 0+6, 1+5, 2+4, 3+3 and their reverses — seven arrangements.
• A > 4 region is tighter than it looks: only 5s and 6s qualify, which is a small slice of your tray.

Step 3 — Place the first domino, then immediately look next door

Tap a domino in the tray to select it, use Rotate (or press R) to choose which direction its second half will extend, then tap a square. The tile lands with its first half on the square you tapped.

The important habit starts here: after every placement, check the region the other half landed in. A tile that perfectly satisfies the region you were thinking about will often quietly wreck its neighbour, and it is far cheaper to notice immediately than five tiles later.

Step 4 — Treat a red outline as information

A region outlined in red is currently impossible — either a value already breaks its rule, or the sum has overshot and cannot come back down. There is no penalty for this. It is feedback, and it is more useful early than late.

When it appears, undo rather than building around it. Press U, or tap any placed domino to lift it back to the tray. There is no move limit and no scoring penalty — the format is explicitly designed for experimentation.

Step 5 — Save the empty regions for last

Regions with no badge accept anything. That makes them tempting to fill first and wrong to fill first. They are the only place awkward tiles can go, so filling them early spends your flexibility on the part of the board that never needed it.

The mistake that stops most beginners

Almost everyone assumes a domino has to sit inside a single region. It does not. A domino covers two squares, those squares can belong to different regions, and each half is judged only against the region it lands in.

If a board looks impossible — the sums do not seem to work no matter what you try — this assumption is the reason nine times out of ten. Once you allow tiles to cross boundaries, boards that seemed broken open up immediately.

A worked opening, move by move

Take a typical easy board: eight squares, four dominoes, three regions — say = 9 over three squares, = 5 over two, and one unconstrained region of three. Here is the reasoning, in order.

1. Compare the averages. The = 5 region spreads 5 pips over 2 squares — an average of 2.5. The = 9 spreads 9 over 3, averaging 3.0. Close, but the two-square region has far fewer arrangements simply because it is smaller. Start there.
2. List what fits. Two squares totalling 5 means 0+5, 1+4, 2+3, and their reverses. Now look at your tray: if you hold a 0-5 and a 2-3, both are candidates — but only if the region's two squares are adjacent, so one tile can cover both. If they are not adjacent, each square is fed by a different domino and the other halves land elsewhere.
3. Check what it costs elsewhere. This is the step beginners skip. Placing the 0-5 inside the = 5 region uses up your only blank. If the = 9 region needed that blank to hit its total without overshooting, you have just made it impossible — and you will not find out for three more moves.
4. Then commit. Place, look immediately at the region the other half landed in, and only continue if that region is still reachable.

Step three is the whole game. Everything else is arithmetic; that step is the puzzle.

What good play actually looks like

A common misconception is that strong players calculate faster. Mostly they do not — they place fewer tiles they later remove. The difference between a two-minute board and a ten-minute board is almost entirely undo count, and undos come from committing before checking.

• Eliminate before you select. Ask where a tile cannot go. That question has far fewer answers than where it could.
• Place forced tiles first. If a square admits exactly one tile, that is not a decision, it is free information. Take all of those before making any real choice.
• Leave the loose regions empty. Unconstrained squares are your flexibility. Spending them early is like spending your change first.
• Scan for orphans. A lone empty square with no empty neighbour can never be covered. Check every few placements, not at the end.

Moving up from easy to medium

The jump that catches people is not the extra squares — it is that medium boards trade some exact sums for looser rules like < 5 and ≠. An exact sum tells you a number. A comparison tells you a range, and a range cannot be added up.

So the arithmetic approach that carried you through easy boards stops working, and it has to be replaced by elimination: not “what totals 9?” but “which of my ten tiles are even legal here?” That is a different mental motion and it feels worse before it feels better. Play six or seven medium boards before judging whether you have got it — the first two or three will feel like a step backwards, and that is the normal shape of the transition rather than a sign you have missed something.

Questions

How long does a pips puzzle take?

An easy board takes two to four minutes once you know the rules. Medium runs five to ten. Hard boards vary enormously — ten minutes on a good day, and genuinely unsolved on a bad one until you come back to it later.

Which difficulty should a beginner start with?

Easy, and specifically several easy boards in a row rather than one before moving on. Easy boards use mostly exact-sum regions, which is where the arithmetic reasoning is most visible. Move up once you can finish one without lifting a tile.

What if I get stuck on a pips board?

Undo back to the last placement you were confident about rather than reshuffling everything. Most dead ends come from one early tile placed on a guess, and everything after it inherits the mistake.

The controls on this site, precisely

The tiles are drawn from the standard double-six domino set — 28 unique tiles, 0-0 through 6-6. The interface stays out of the way, but it is worth thirty seconds to know exactly what it does — a couple of these answer questions that otherwise interrupt your first board:

• Placing: tap a domino in the tray, then tap a square. The first half lands on the square you tapped; the second half extends in the direction the Rotate button currently shows. If the second half would land off-board or on a filled square, nothing is placed and the board tells you why.
• Rotating: the Rotate button (or R) cycles Right → Down → Left → Up. Left and Up matter: they are how you place into a corner square whose only open neighbour is behind it.
• Removing: tap any placed domino to lift it back to the tray, or U / Backspace to undo the most recent placement. Reset clears the whole board and the timer.
• Feedback: a region outlined in red is currently impossible — a value breaks its rule or a sum has overshot. Red is information, not punishment; there is no score penalty attached.
• Saving: your placements and timer save automatically in your browser, per date and per difficulty. Close the tab mid-solve and it will be exactly as you left it — though clearing browser data clears progress, and progress does not follow you between devices, because nothing is stored on our servers.
• The timer: counts up, affects nothing, and is there only if you enjoy racing yourself. Nothing on the site ranks you.

Your first week, mapped out

If you want a concrete on-ramp rather than a pile of advice, this sequence takes about fifteen minutes a day and reliably gets a new player to comfortable-on-medium inside a week: days one and two, easy boards only, from the archive — three per day, and re-read the badge list before each. Days three and four, keep playing easy but add the no-undo constraint: place nothing you cannot justify aloud. Day five, replay the two easy boards you found hardest — if they fall quickly, the technique stuck. Days six and seven, move to medium, expecting the first couple to feel like a step backwards as comparisons replace arithmetic. That dip is the transition working, not failing.

Go and play one

• Today's pips puzzle — start on easy.
• Practice mode — unlimited boards while it is still clicking.
• Pips archive — every past board.
• Pips rules — the formal version of everything above.
• The ≠ rule — the badge that causes the most confusion.