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Pips

NYT Pips Answers and Hints Today

NYT Pips answers and hints for today, October 22, 2026 — all three boards, with progressive hints before any solution so you can take a nudge and go back to the puzzle instead of having it spoiled. Every previous day is here too: 431 days and 1,293 boards since the game launched.

Sukie, Puzzle editor at EnergyPips

By Sukie · Puzzle editor

·

Today's hints — October 22, 2026

Today's set runs from a 10-square easy board to a 22-square hard one, a gap of 12 squares, with the hard board carrying 2 doubles against easy's 3 and 4 loose regions against 2. Constructed by Ian Livengood and Rodolfo Kurchan. Edited by Ian Livengood.

easy — 10 squares

3 doubles in a 5-tile tray is a lot, and doubles are the most constrained tiles you can be dealt. Placing them first is not a preference today, it is the route through.

Hint — where to start

Start with the > 4 region — the middle centre single square — where the pips in this region must add up to more than 4. Work there first because only 2 combinations of values can fill it.

Hint — what your tray forces

The tray carries 3 doubles: 6-6, 3-3, 0-0. A double is the only tile that fits wholly inside an all-equal region, and there is one here.

Hint — the opening region's values

The > 4 region resolves to 5. Which half of which domino supplies each is still yours to work out.

medium — 14 squares

The = 0 region is the giveaway: a target that low forces blanks and ones, and almost nothing else fits.

Hint — where to start

Start with the = 0 region — the middle right single square — where the pips in this region must add up to exactly 0. Work there first because exactly one combination of values can fill it, so it is fully forced before you place anything.

Hint — what your tray forces

The tray carries 1 double: 6-6. With 1 all-different and 1 all-equal region on the board, those doubles are barred from the former and are the only tiles that fit wholly inside the latter — which usually pins two of them before you make a real decision.

Hint — the opening region's values

The = 0 region resolves to 0. Which half of which domino supplies each is still yours to work out.

hard — 22 squares

The = 0 region is the giveaway: a target that low forces blanks and ones, and almost nothing else fits.

Hint — where to start

Start with the = 2 region — the top centre single square — where the pips in this region must add up to exactly 2. Work there first because exactly one combination of values can fill it, so it is fully forced before you place anything.

Hint — what your tray forces

The tray carries 2 doubles: 1-1, 2-2. With 2 all-different and 1 all-equal region on the board, those doubles are barred from the former and are the only tiles that fit wholly inside the latter — which usually pins two of them before you make a real decision.

Hint — the opening region's values

The = 2 region resolves to 2. Which half of which domino supplies each is still yours to work out.

Still stuck? The full solution is on today's page.

Every region and how it resolves, plus each tile and the two squares it covers.

Full answers for October 22, 2026 →

Finished today's? Play another one now

The Times gives you three boards a day and then asks you to come back tomorrow. We publish our own daily pips puzzle in the same format — free, no account — plus an archive going back to August 2025 and an unlimited mode that never runs out.

Play today's boardUnlimited pips381-day archive

How to use these pages

Being stuck on a puzzle and being told the answer are two different needs, and most answer pages only serve the second. Every page here is built as a ladder, so you can stop at the rung that gets you moving again.

  1. Where to start. Names the most constrained region on the board and says how many combinations can legally fill it. No values given — this is the hint that gets you unstuck without costing you the solve.
  2. What your tray forces. Which doubles you were dealt and what that rules in or out, since a double is the only tile that fits wholly inside an all-equal region and can never fit wholly inside an all-different one.
  3. The opening region's values. The actual numbers in that first region, but not which half of which domino supplies them. Usually enough to unlock the rest.
  4. The full answer. Every region and how it resolves, plus each tile and the two squares it covers.

What 1,293 boards reveal about how Pips is built

Having every published board in one place makes it possible to ask questions no single day can answer. These figures come from measuring all 431 days — 2025-08-18 to 2026-10-22 — and as far as I can tell nobody has published them before.

Every NYT Pips board by difficulty, measured 2026-10-22.
DifficultySquaresRegionsDoublesLoose regions
easy9.961.3240%
medium14.78.31.7742%
hard26.414.63.129%

Difficulty is built from size, not from vagueness

This is the finding that surprised me, because it is the opposite of what most puzzle generators do. A hard NYT board is 26.4 squares against an easy board's 9.9 — two and a half times the size. But the share of regions that give you no exact number to work from actually falls, from 40% on easy to 29% on hard.

In other words the hard board is more tightly specified than the easy one. It is harder because there is more of it and more to hold in your head at once, not because it withholds information. That is a deliberate and quite humane design choice: you are never left guessing, only counting.

It is also the clearest difference between the Times' boards and our own. The generator behind this site's archive moves the other way — 38% loose on easy rising to 44% on hard — so our hard boards bite by withholding and theirs bite by accumulating. Neither is wrong; they are different kinds of difficult, and knowing which you are facing changes how you should open.

The all-different rule is almost never used

Across every easy board ever published, the ≠ badge appears on 0% of regions — it is essentially absent — and even on hard boards it reaches only 2%. What the Times leans on instead is the all-equal badge, at 21% of easy regions and 17% of hard ones.

Unconstrained regions are the other surprise: 23% of regions on an easy board carry no rule at all, falling to 11% on hard. An easy board is not easy because its rules are gentle — it is easy because a quarter of it has no rules to satisfy.

Small targets, one very large region

Across 5,754 exact-sum regions the median target is 4 and the commonest is 4, which is lower than most people would guess — the arithmetic is deliberately kept small and frequent rather than large and rare. The full range runs from 0 to 63, and the largest single region ever published spans 16 squares.

One last thing the data settles, and it corrects something this page used to say. The feed carries two credits. Ian Livengood is the editor on all 431 days, without a break since launch — but the boards are built by three constructors, not one: Rodolfo Kurchan (697), Ian Livengood (512), Heidi Erwin (83) and (uncredited in the feed) (1). The split runs along the difficulty line — Rodolfo Kurchan builds 93% of the hard boards, Ian Livengood most of the easy ones — which is why each tier has such a consistent feel of its own.

Every day's answers

Newest first. 431 days, back to August 18, 2025.

October 202622 days

September 202630 days

August 202631 days

July 202631 days

June 202630 days

May 202631 days

April 202630 days

March 202631 days

February 202628 days

January 202631 days

December 202531 days

November 202530 days

October 202531 days

September 202530 days

August 202514 days

How this stays current

Nobody types any of this in. A scheduled job runs shortly after midnight New York time, collects the day's puzzle data, re-solves all three boards from scratch, checks every region rule, and only then commits the day — which publishes the page. A day that fails verification is skipped and reported rather than published with a doubtful answer.

Everything already collected is stored here rather than fetched when you load the page, so these pages stay fast and keep working regardless of what happens upstream. If a day is ever missing from the list above, that is the honest state of things rather than a page pretending to have an answer it does not.

Common questions

Where can I find NYT Pips answers for today?
Today’s page is linked at the top of this one, and every day since launch is listed by month below. Each page leads with three graduated hints and keeps the full solution behind a final disclosure, so you can take a nudge without spoiling the board.
Do you give the answer away immediately?
No. Every page runs hint one (where to start and why), hint two (what your tray forces), hint three (the values in the opening region), and only then the full solution. Nothing is visible until you open it.
How far back do the answers go?
Every day the New York Times has published Pips — 431 days from 2025-08-18 to 2026-10-22, all three difficulties each, which is 1,293 boards.
Are the answers checked?
Yes, mechanically. Every board is re-solved from its own stored solution and every region rule re-checked before it is ever published here. A board that fails is not shown at all rather than shown with a doubtful answer.
Can I play the NYT boards on this site?
No, deliberately. These pages report and explain the solutions; they do not reproduce the boards to play. To play the official puzzle, go to the New York Times. To play a free daily domino puzzle of our own making, with its own full archive, the rest of this site is exactly that.
Who makes the NYT Pips puzzles?
Two credits, and they are different people. Ian Livengood is the editor on all 431 days measured here. The boards are built by three constructors — Rodolfo Kurchan (697 boards), Ian Livengood (512 boards), Heidi Erwin (83 boards), (uncredited in the feed) (1 boards) — and they split by difficulty: Rodolfo Kurchan builds 93% of the hard boards, Ian Livengood most of the easy ones.
Are you affiliated with The New York Times?
No. EnergyPips is an independent site with no connection to the NYT. We report on their puzzle and publish our own separate daily puzzle.

A note on what this is

EnergyPips is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to The New York Times. These pages report and explain the solutions to a published puzzle; they do not reproduce the boards for play. To play the official puzzle, go to The New York Times. To play a free daily domino puzzle of our own, today's board is here and the archive goes back to August 2025.

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