NYT Pips today hints and answers: January 22

Need some help with the NYT Pips today? Unlike the other NYT Games, Pips is one of the few that focuses on numbers and logical placement. No worries, though, we've got you covered.

Below, we've compiled hints and solutions for the Easy and Medium puzzles, along with a comprehensive guide for the Hard Pips. You can play along here.

Spoilers below for the January 22 Pips. Only read if you want the solutions for today's Pips puzzles.

Alternatively, for more word-based puzzling, check out our guides for tips and solutions to Connections, Strands and Wordle.

Pips tips — how to play Pips

Pips is a domino placement game featuring a grid of multicolored boxes that gets more complicated and larger as you go up in difficulty. Each colored zone represents a condition you have to meet.

You select dominoes and place dominoes into the grid to meet those conditions. You must use every domino to achieve each condition and win the game. Clicking or tapping on the dominoes rotates them so you can position the tiles.

In the above example from a medium puzzle, there are four colored zones. Your placed dominoes must total 12 in the purple zone. In the teal and orange sectors, the number of domino pips must be greater than 3.

In the hard mode, the zones and symbols get more complicated. For example, you could see a crossed-out equal sign, meaning that the three squares you place must be different numbers.

Here are the various symbols you might see:

• = All pips must be the same in this group
• ≠ All pips must not be the same number in this group
• > The pips in the tile must be greater than the listed number
• < The pips in this tile must be less than the listed number
• A number [like 12], the pips must equal that exact number
• Tiles with no color can be anything; think of this as a free space

To win a game of Pips, you must fulfill every condition and fill every square. In some puzzles, there is only one correct solution. In others, usually the harder ones, there can be multiple solutions.

Today's Pips answers — hints to help you solve it

Below are the solutions for the Easy and Medium-level Pips. After that, you can find a fuller walkthrough for the Hard level. Spoilers below.

Today's Easy Pips solution

Today's Medium Pips solution

Today's Hard Pips walkthrough and solution

It's a goldfish, that's how I'm thinking of it. Not a real one, like those crunchy orange crackers that every kid has.

Initially, I started with the fin and olive >16 zone. Obviously, the double 6/6 goes in the horizontal squares. There are three more sixes to make it 18 but I wasn't sure yet which ones went in.

So I moved over to the purple <2 zone, which has to take the two blanks since there isn't a 1 pip anywhere. The 0/4 I used for the teal 10 and the 0/3 goes into the pink 9.

The 2 on the 6/2 can't really go anywhere useful except as the other half of the teal 10. I messed up with the dark blue zone by putting the 6/3 there first, but eventually I swapped it with the 6/5 for pink 9 and the dark blue = area.

That leaves the 6/3 for the >16 olive zone and going into the orange =. The 5/3 can go into the orange and dark blue = zones. Which means the 4/3 caps the orange area.

To end the puzzle, the 4/4 double goes in the purple = zone at the top. The 4/5 goes into the tan free space and the >4 pink square in the other fin.

Here's how it looks:

Hard Pips solution