Pips2 Daily

About Pips2 Daily

Pips2 is an independent site built around the domino puzzle made popular by The New York Times as Pips. It offers unlimited generated boards, a hub for the current NYT set, and its own daily challenge, Pips2 Daily, which is the game on this page. The site states that it is not affiliated with The New York Times.

Each puzzle is a shaped board split into coloured regions, with a rack of dominoes underneath. You must place every domino exactly once, covering two board cells each, until the board is full. Each region carries a clue: a number means its pips must add up to that number, = means all its pips are equal, the not-equal sign means they all differ, and < or > means the total must be below or above a value. Blank regions have no rule. A domino can lie across two regions, so one move can affect two clues.

Every date gets three fixed boards, Easy, Medium and Hard, picked from Pips2's own generated puzzles. Each shows a puzzle number, and the site says the same generated puzzle is never used for two daily slots. Everyone who opens a given date and difficulty gets the same board. A timer runs while you solve, and Clear and Reveal are there if you want to start over or see the answer.

The daily plays free in the browser with no account, and the site carries ads. Older dates can be opened from their own dated pages. There is also a paid iPhone app with 6,000 built-in puzzles, offline play, a board repair mode, live 1v1 matches and daily challenges with leaderboards.

How to play Pips2 Daily

1. Open Pips2 Daily; today's Easy board loads, and the menu above the board switches to Medium or Hard.
2. Read the clue on each coloured region: a target sum, =, not equal, < or >, or no clue at all.
3. Drag a domino from the rack onto two empty board cells; it may cross from one region into another.
4. Place every domino exactly once until the board is full and every region rule holds at the same time.
5. Use Clear to put the dominoes back on the rack and try again, or open an earlier date from its dated page.

Screenshots

Tips

• Start with small regions that have an exact sum: a one-cell region with a 0 or a 6 leaves only a few dominoes that can reach it.
• Count how many of each pip value the rack holds; an = region of three or four cells often needs the only value that appears often enough.
• Look at dominoes that must cross a region border, since each half then has to satisfy a different clue.
• Do the Easy board first to see how the clue signs read before trying Hard.

Questions