The New York Times has a new daily puzzle habit, and it comes with a catch: when you get stuck, the game won’t help you. Until now. Mashable has stepped in with piecemeal answers for every difficulty level of NYT Pips for September 30, 2026, so you can finish the puzzle without starting over.
Pips, released in August 2025, puts a spin on dominoes. Players lay tiles vertically or horizontally, connecting them across color-coded spaces with specific rules. The game asks for sums, matches, differences and comparisons, and it doesn’t care whether a tile touches itself. The twist is that only partial tiles count toward some conditions, which makes the harder levels harder than they look.
How Pips Works
If you know dominoes, you know the basics. Tiles connect edge-to-edge, and the rules apply to the colored spaces they sit in. The big difference is the condition system. A single number space demands that every pip in it adds up to that number. An equal space requires every half to match. A not-equal space bans repeats entirely. Less than and greater than spaces compare the total to a number.
The rules sound simple, but they layer. An area without color coding has no conditions at all, which means you can lay tiles however you want. That freedom helps early on but bites later, when the board fills and options narrow.
Easy Hints First
The easy level is where the game starts, and the hints start small. Number (1) asks for a total of 1, and the answer is 1-3 placed horizontally. There’s a second solution too: 1-5 placed horizontally, or 6-0 placed horizontally. Both work because the tiles fit the condition.
Equal (6) asks for every half to be 6, and the answer is 6-0 placed horizontally, or 6-6 placed horizontally. Number (10) asks for a total of 10, and the solutions are 1-5 placed horizontally, or 4-5 placed horizontally. These are the simplest answers in the guide, and they set the pattern for everything that follows.
Medium Difficulty Gets Harder
The medium level adds more conditions, and the hints reflect that. Number (11) asks for a total of 11, and the answer is 5-3 placed vertically, or 3-2 placed horizontally. Less than (2) asks for a total below 2, and the answer is 1-4 placed vertically.
Not Equal asks for every half to be different, and the answer is 6-4 placed horizontally, 1-4 placed vertically, or 5-2 placed vertically. Less than (8) asks for a total below 8, and the answer is 6-4 placed horizontally, or 2-1 placed horizontally. Number (2) asks for a total of 2, and the answer is 3-2 placed horizontally.
Equal (4) asks for every half to be 4, and the answer is 5-2 placed vertically, or 2-2 placed horizontally. These solutions show the game’s logic in action: a single condition can be met by multiple tile arrangements, and the hardest part is seeing which ones work.
Hard Difficulty Is Where It Breaks Down
The hard level is the test. Number (6) asks for a total of 6, and the answer is 4-2 placed horizontally, or 4-3 placed horizontally. Number (3) asks for a total of 3, and the answer is 4-3 placed horizontally, or 0-0 placed horizontally.
Equal (4) asks for every half to be 4, and the answer is 4-2 placed horizontally, 4-4 placed vertically, or 4-1 placed horizontally. Number (9) asks for a total of 9, and the answer is 4-4 placed vertically, or 5-1 placed horizontally. Number (22) asks for a total of 22, and the answer is 4-6 placed horizontally, 6-5 placed vertically, or 6-2 placed vertically.
Less than (1) asks for a total below 1, and the answer is 4-0 placed horizontally. Greater Than (4) asks for a total above 4, and the answer is 6-5 placed vertically. Not Equal asks for every half to be different, and the answer is 3-1 placed horizontally, or 3-2 placed horizontally. Number (2) asks for a total of 2, and the answer is 3-2 placed horizontally.
Equal (2) asks for every half to be 2, and the answer is 6-2 placed vertically, 5-2 placed horizontally, or 2-2 placed vertically. The hard level is where the game’s design shows its limits: the conditions pile up, the board narrows, and the solutions stop being obvious.
What This Guide Actually Does
The Mashable guide is not subtle about its purpose. It gives away the answers in full, piece by piece, so players who are stuck can peek at a hint without giving up the whole puzzle. The game itself only reveals the entire solution when you fail, forcing you to move on to the next difficulty level and start again. This guide breaks that wall.
The format is consistent across all three difficulty levels. Each condition gets its own section, and each section lists the possible solutions. The player who wants to cheat can scan the page for their current condition and find the answer in seconds. The player who wants to solve honestly still has the board in front of them; the guide just takes the guesswork out of the rules.
Key Facts Box
- Game: NYT Pips
- Released: August 2025
- Difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Hard
- Date of hints: September 30, 2026
- Format: Piecemeal hints for each condition
The Bottom Line
Mashable’s guide is a practical tool for a specific moment. If you’re stuck on a condition and you want to keep playing, the hints are there. If you want to solve honestly, you can ignore them. Either way, the game is still the game.
The guide is a gift to the frustrated and a reminder to the patient. It doesn’t change the rules, and it doesn’t make the hard levels easier to solve. It just tells you what the answer is, and that’s all it does.
Source material: “NYT Pips hints, answers for September 30, 2026,” Mashable.
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