NYT Pips is the New York Times’ domino-based daily puzzle, released in August 2025. If you’re stuck on today’s Easy, Medium, or Hard board, this guide covers every condition and tile placement for March 30, 2026 — in order, so you can peek only at what you need.
What Is NYT Pips?
Pips is a single-player logic puzzle built around domino tiles. Like traditional dominoes, tiles are placed horizontally or vertically and connect to one another. What makes Pips different is the color-coded condition zones overlaid on the board. Each colored region carries a rule that the pip values of tiles within it must satisfy.
The five condition types you’ll encounter:
- Number: All pips within the zone must add up to the given total.
- Equal: Every domino half inside the zone must show the same pip count.
- Not Equal: Every domino half must show a different pip count from the others.
- Less Than: Every domino half must be below the given number.
- Greater Than: Every domino half must exceed the given number.
If a zone has no color coding, there are no restrictions on tiles placed there. Note that it is common for only half of a domino to fall inside a condition zone — only the pip values within the zone count toward the condition.
When you’re stuck, the game’s only built-in option is to reveal the entire puzzle, which forces you to forfeit the difficulty level. The hints below let you get unstuck one clue at a time.
Easy Difficulty — March 30 Pips Hints and Answers
Greater Than (3): Every domino half in this space must be greater than 3. Answer: 4-4, placed horizontally.
Equal (0): Every domino half must equal 0. Answer: 6-0 placed horizontally; 0-1 placed horizontally.
Number (10): All pips in this zone must add up to 10. Answer: 5-5, placed horizontally.
Number (13): All pips in this zone must add up to 13. Answer: 6-0 placed horizontally; 4-4 placed horizontally; 3-1 placed horizontally.
Number (4): All pips in this zone must add up to 4. Answer: 0-1 placed horizontally; 3-1 placed horizontally; 1-1 placed horizontally.
Medium Difficulty — March 30 Pips Hints and Answers
Greater Than (4): Every domino half must be greater than 4. Answer: 0-4, placed vertically.
Less Than (4) [orange]: Every domino half must be less than 4. Answer: 0-6 placed vertically; 3-0 placed horizontally.
Equal (0) [red]: Every domino half must equal 0. Answer: 3-0 placed horizontally; 0-2 placed horizontally.
Equal (2) [light blue]: Every domino half must equal 2. Answer: 0-2 placed horizontally; 2-1 placed horizontally.
Less Than (3) [orange]: Every domino half must be less than 3. Answer: 2-1, placed horizontally.
Greater Than (4): Every domino half must be greater than 4. Answer: 6-2, placed vertically.
Equal (2) [purple]: Every domino half must equal 2. Answer: 6-2 placed vertically; 2-2 placed horizontally.
Number (7): All pips must add up to 7. Answer: 4-1 placed horizontally; 2-3 placed horizontally.
Number (2): All pips must add up to 2. Answer: 2-3, placed horizontally.
Hard Difficulty — March 30 Pips Hints and Answers
Number (3): All pips must add up to 3. Answer: 5-1 placed horizontally; 1-1 placed horizontally; 0-2 placed horizontally.
Greater Than (8): Every domino half must be greater than 8. Answer: 5-1 placed horizontally; 6-1 placed vertically.
Number (5): All pips must add up to 5. Answer: 0-2 placed horizontally; 3-6 placed vertically.
Number (2): All pips must add up to 2. Answer: 6-1 placed vertically; 1-4 placed vertically.
Greater Than (8): Every domino half must be greater than 8. Answer: 3-6 placed vertically; 5-4 placed vertically.
Number (9): All pips must add up to 9. Answer: 1-4 placed vertically; 5-2 placed vertically.
Number (3): All pips must add up to 3. Answer: 2-2 placed vertically; 1-0 placed vertically.
Number (6): All pips must add up to 6. Answer: 5-2 placed vertically; 4-0 placed horizontally.
Number (2): All pips must add up to 2. Answer: 2-2 placed vertically; 4-0 placed horizontally.
Number (0): All pips must add up to 0. Answer: 1-0 placed vertically; 0-0 placed horizontally.
Equal (4): Every domino half must equal 4. Answer: 5-4 placed vertically; 4-4 placed vertically.
Number (8): All pips must add up to 8. Answer: 3-5, placed horizontally.
Tips for Solving NYT Pips Faster
Today’s Hard puzzle is particularly demanding because several conditions share the same label — there are multiple Number (3), Number (2), and Greater Than (8) zones on the same board, each requiring different tile combinations. Keep track of which zone you’re solving and don’t assume the same tile works twice.
A few strategies that help across all difficulty levels:
Work from the most constrained zones first. Zones like Equal (0) or Number (0) have very few valid tile combinations, so they act as natural anchors. Locking those down early reduces the possibilities everywhere else.
Track which tiles you’ve already placed. Pips uses a fixed set of dominoes — each tile exists only once. On Hard, this matters significantly, since tiles like 6-1 and 5-4 appear in multiple conditions and their placement in one zone eliminates them from others.
Use orientation as a tool. The same domino placed horizontally versus vertically can satisfy entirely different zone conditions depending on which half lands inside the colored area. Today’s Medium puzzle uses this to good effect with several vertically placed tiles.
More Daily Puzzle Answers
Looking for help with today’s other NYT puzzles? Check out these recent guides:
- March 27, 2026 NYT Pips Hints and Answers
- March 24, 2026 NYT Pips Hints and Answers
- March 23, 2026 NYT Pips Hints and Answers
- March 29, 2026 Wordle #1744 Hint and Answer
- March 29, 2026 NYT Connections Puzzle #1022 Hints and Answers
- March 29, 2026 NYT Strands Hints and Answers
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