NYT Pips Hints & Answers for July 28, 2026

Ian Livengood's easy grid deploys two equals regions that lock identical pip values across adjacent cells, bounded by less-than and greater-than constraints. The less-3 and less-1 regions cut the possible values, while the greater-5 forces a single high pip. The available domino set—all containing a zero except one double—interacts with these constraints to produce a short, deterministic chain: resolve the inequality extremes, then populate the equals clusters.

Rodolfo Kurchan's medium puzzle escalates with chained sum targets: two sum-7 regions sit side by side, adjacent to a sum-8, and are flanked by two three-cell equals regions. The equals zones impose uniform values that immediately claim the only matching dominoes—[6,6] and [0,0]. Once those are placed, the sum constraints resolve via a cascade: the remaining pips partition cleanly into the sum targets, with the domino [4,2] acting as a bridge between the sum-7 and sum-8 regions.

Kurchan's hard grid reads like a preseeded number puzzle: 32 single-cell sum targets dictate exact pip values for almost every position, leaving only a few empty and greater-0 cells as slack. The domino set is tailored to this lattice—each required value must be paired with a 0 or another specific number from a neighboring cell. Solving becomes an exercise in matching domino halves to fixed sum demands, with the empty cells absorbing the 0 halves from the low-value sum targets. This tightly orchestrated design makes the NYT Pips hard puzzle a pure logic of placement.

Try these hints one at a time. Each hint becomes more specific to help you solve it yourself!