Pips Answer for Saturday, January 31, 2026
Complete NYT Pips puzzle solution with interactive board and expert analysis.
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Nyt Pips easy answer for 2026-01-31
Answer for 2026-01-31
Solving the Pips puzzles for January 31, 2026, was a fun ride through different logic styles. I started with the Easy puzzle by Ian Livengood. Right away, I noticed all the dominoes available had a zero on one side. This is a huge hint.
I looked for the sum regions that targeted zero. Cells like (1,3), (2,2), (2,4), (3,5), and (4,6) were all individual cells with a sum target of 0, meaning those halves of the dominoes had to be blank. The region (3,0), (3,1), and (4,0) also summed to 0, which meant three more cells were blank. Once I mapped out the zeros, the rest of the dominoes fell into place based on the remaining sum and comparison targets, like the 6-4 domino fitting into the (4,6) and (3,6) slot because (3,6) had to be greater than 5. Moving on to the
Nyt Pips medium answer for 2026-01-31
Answer for 2026-01-31
Medium puzzle by Rodolfo Kurchan, the difficulty jumped. I immediately focused on the sum of 10 for cells (1,3) and (2,3). In a set where the highest pips are 6, a sum of 10 only has a few options like 4+6 or 5+5.
I checked the 'equals' region for (2,0), (3,0), and (3,1). Since these three had to be the same value, I looked at my remaining dominoes and realized they had to be 1s or 2s. I placed the [6,1] and [3,1] dominoes to satisfy those needs.
Nyt Pips hard answer for 2026-01-31
Answer for 2026-01-31
Finally, the Hard puzzle was a real brain-burner. The 'equals' regions were the key. There were three different regions where four cells had to have the exact same value.
For example, (1,4), (2,3), (2,4), and (2,5) all had to match. This forced my hand on which dominoes could be placed adjacent to each other. I used the empty cells (2,6), (6,2), and (6,4) as anchors to figure out which dominoes were 'standing' versus 'lying down.' By the time I got to the sum of 12 region in the top left, I only had a few high-value dominoes left, like the [5,1] and [6,0], which helped me wrap it up.
What I Learned
This set really taught me the power of 'equals' constraints in Pips. When a region says multiple cells are equal, it doesn't just tell you their value; it restricts the orientation of every domino touching that region.
I also learned to look for 'bottlenecks.' In the Medium puzzle, the sum of 10 was a bottleneck because so few dominoes could reach that total. In the Easy puzzle, the bottleneck was the fact that every single domino required a zero, which meant I could treat the zero-sum cells as a skeleton for the entire grid. I also noticed that Rodolfo Kurchan loves to use 'empty' cells as blockers to prevent certain domino placements, which is a clever way to force a unique solution.