Pips November 13, 2025
Puzzle #88 · Thursday
This is the pips puzzle for November 13, 2025 — all three boards, free to play, with no subscription and no account. The easy board has 8 squares, 4 dominoes and 3 regions — 2 exact-sum and 1 all-different regions.
By Sukie · Puzzle editor
Hints and answers for November 13, 2025
Stuck? Take it in stages. A nudge costs less than the full answer, and the answer is here if you want it — each diagram below is the verified solution our generator built this board from, using tiles drawn from the standard double-six domino set. On the looser boards other valid arrangements can exist too; any filling that covers every square and satisfies every region counts as solved.
easy board — reveal the solution
Start with the "= 8" region. It spreads 8 pips across 3 squares, averaging 2.7 per square, so the halves that can legally sit there are limited before you have placed anything at all.
medium board — reveal the solution
Start with the "= 3" region. It spreads 3 pips across 3 squares, averaging 1.0 per square, so the halves that can legally sit there are limited before you have placed anything at all.
hard board — reveal the solution
Start with the "= 7" region. It spreads 7 pips across 3 squares, averaging 2.3 per square, so the halves that can legally sit there are limited before you have placed anything at all.
Where the information is on today's boards
Each board's regions, ordered from most constraining to least — which is the order worth working them in. Nothing here gives a value away, only how much each region can tell you before the rest of the board does.
easy
- = 8 — 3 squares that must total exactly 8. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 18, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- ≠ — 1 square that must all differ. With only seven pip values in existence, no double can sit wholly inside it.
- = 18 — 4 squares that must total exactly 18. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 24, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
medium
- = 9 — 3 squares that must total exactly 9. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 18, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- = 6 — 3 squares that must total exactly 6. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 18, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- = 3 — 3 squares that must total exactly 3. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 18, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- ≠ — 1 square that must all differ. With only seven pip values in existence, no double can sit wholly inside it.
- ≠ — 2 squares that must all differ. With only seven pip values in existence, no double can sit wholly inside it.
- < 4 — 2 squares totalling less than 4. A bound rather than a target, so it narrows without telling you a number.
hard
- = 12 — 3 squares that must total exactly 12. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 18, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- = 7 — 3 squares that must total exactly 7. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 18, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- = 8 — 3 squares that must total exactly 8. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 18, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- > 1 — 2 squares totalling more than 1. Like the less-than badge it constrains without pinning, which is why it is worth leaving until later.
- = 17 — 5 squares that must total exactly 17. The range a region this size can hold is 0 to 30, so that target rules out most fillings before you place anything.
- ≠ — 2 squares that must all differ. With only seven pip values in existence, no double can sit wholly inside it.
- > 2 — 2 squares totalling more than 2. Like the less-than badge it constrains without pinning, which is why it is worth leaving until later.
How this set compares with the rest of the archive
The medium board runs 50% loose regions against a typical 40%, so it is vaguer than most — fewer regions hand you a number outright and more of the work is deciding where tiles cannot go.
Measured against the rest of the archive this is a middling set: 8, 14 and 20 squares across 3, 6 and 7 regions, with nothing far enough from the norm to explain an unusually fast or slow solve. If one of them fought you today, it was the particular shape of the regions rather than anything the numbers can show.
That is worth knowing, because it means the habits transfer. A board this ordinary is the right one to practise the standard opening on — bound every exact sum, place or exclude the doubles, then check for an orphan square before touching a comparison region.
Board by board
easy
The easy board has 8 squares, 4 dominoes and 3 regions — 2 exact-sum and 1 all-different regions.
Start with the "= 8" region. It spreads 8 pips across 3 squares, averaging 2.7 per square, so the halves that can legally sit there are limited before you have placed anything at all.
medium
The medium board has 14 squares, 7 dominoes and 6 regions — 3 exact-sum, 1 less-than and 2 all-different regions.
Start with the "= 3" region. It spreads 3 pips across 3 squares, averaging 1.0 per square, so the halves that can legally sit there are limited before you have placed anything at all.
hard
The hard board has 20 squares, 10 dominoes and 7 regions — 4 exact-sum, 2 greater-than and 1 all-different regions.
Start with the "= 7" region. It spreads 7 pips across 3 squares, averaging 2.3 per square, so the halves that can legally sit there are limited before you have placed anything at all.
Reading the outline
This is a distinctly irregular outline, filling only 67% of its 5×6 bounding box. Narrow arms are the danger: a square at the end of a one-wide corridor has exactly one possible partner, so if that partner gets covered the board becomes unsolvable regardless of what else you do.
The usual dead end
The all-different region is the one to watch. With 5 squares in the widest region on this board, an all-different rule quietly forbids far more arrangements than it looks like it does.
The all-different region is the one to watch. With 3 squares in the widest region on this board, an all-different rule quietly forbids far more arrangements than it looks like it does.
If you have genuinely stalled, undo back to the last tile you were confident about rather than reshuffling everything. Most dead ends on a board this size trace to one early placement made on a guess, and everything after it inherits the mistake.
The badges on this board
The hard board uses 3 of the six possible region rules. What each one is actually demanding here:
- = 12
- Spreads exactly 12 pips over 3 squares, an average of 4.0 each. Anything that pushes the running total past 12 is already lost, so this is the region to count before you commit.
- > 1
- Requires every value above 1, leaving only 5 of the seven pip values legal in those 2 squares.
- ≠
- Forbids any repeat across its 2 squares. Note that this constrains values, not tiles — two different dominoes both contributing a 4 still breaks it.
The full badge vocabulary, including the ones this board happens not to use, is on the pips rules page.
What your tray forces
The tray holds 3 doubles (6-6, 1-1, 5-5), and the board has 1 region governed by an equality rule. A double can never sit entirely inside an all-different region, so those tiles have to straddle a boundary — which usually pins them down before anything else on the board.
The heaviest tile on the hard board is the 6-6 and the lightest is the 1-1. Those two are worth locating first: the heavy tile can only go where a sum has room, and the light one is often the only thing that fits a tight region.
Where this puzzle comes from
This board was not hand-designed and it was not copied from anywhere. The generator laid down a valid arrangement of 10 dominoes first, then divided the 20 squares into 7 regions and derived each region's rule from the values that had already landed in it. Because the solution existed before the constraints did, this board provably has one.
It was then loosened: rules were swapped for weaker ones, one at a time, keeping each swap only while the number of valid arrangements stayed inside the bound for this difficulty. That is why 3 of the hard board's 7 regions carry something other than an exact total.
Generation is seeded from the date, so November 13, 2025 produces this exact board on every device, permanently. Sharing this link always shows the same puzzle. More on the process in our editorial policy.
The difficulty ladder
These are three separate boards, not one board with hints removed, so playing all three on November 13, 2025 gives you three genuine attempts rather than three views of the same solution.
- easy
- 8 squares, 4 dominoes, 3 regions, 2 region boundaries. 33% of its regions carry something other than an exact total, and the widest region spans 4 squares.
- medium
- 14 squares, 7 dominoes, 6 regions, 8 region boundaries. 50% of its regions carry something other than an exact total, and the widest region spans 3 squares.
- hard
- 20 squares, 10 dominoes, 7 regions, 10 region boundaries. 43% of its regions carry something other than an exact total, and the widest region spans 5 squares.
The arithmetic check
Your tray carries 62 pips in total, and the exact-sum regions between them demand 44 across 14 squares. That leaves 18 pips to absorb elsewhere. Running that subtraction before you place anything tells you whether the unconstrained squares are going to be a dumping ground or a tight squeeze.
The same check on the medium board: your tray carries 38 pips in total, and the exact-sum regions between them demand 18 across 9 squares. That leaves 20 pips to absorb elsewhere. Running that subtraction before you place anything tells you whether the unconstrained squares are going to be a dumping ground or a tight squeeze.
More pips
- Pips archive — every date since the archive opened.
- Pips rules — what each region badge means.
- Practice mode — a fresh board whenever you want one.
- Today's pips puzzle