Logic Puzzles Like NYT Pips: Sudoku, Kakuro, KenKen and More

Pips is a domino puzzle where every region of the board prints a rule, and your placements have to satisfy all of them at once. There is no vocabulary involved, just a chain of small deductions. If that is what you like, here are puzzles that work the same part of your brain.

Most of these are not word games, so this list is about method: starting where the rules are strictest, and checking what each move does to its neighbours.

Number placement

NYT Sudoku

Sudoku is the obvious step. Fill a nine by nine grid so each digit 1 to 9 appears once in every row, column and three by three box. No arithmetic is needed; everything is deduction from the digits already printed. Easy and Medium grids can be solved by pure elimination, with no guessing. Sudoku hints.

LinkedIn Mini Sudoku

LinkedIn’s Mini Sudoku is a smaller grid where each row, column and shaded region contains every number exactly once. It is a quick way to get the Sudoku feeling in less time. We don’t cover it, but the rules are on LinkedIn’s help page.

Number puzzles with sums and operations

KenKen

KenKen was invented in 2004 by the Japanese math teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto. In an n by n grid you place the digits 1 to n so none repeats in a row or column, like Sudoku. The grid is also divided into outlined groups called cages, each showing a target number and an operation (add, subtract, multiply or divide). The digits in a cage must produce that target.

Cages are the closest thing to Pips regions: a local rule that has to agree with the rows and columns around it. A digit can repeat within a cage as long as the repeats do not share a row or column.

Kakuro

Kakuro looks like a crossword filled with numbers. You fill white cells with digits 1 to 9 so that each run of cells adds up to the clue beside it, and no digit repeats within a run. A digit may repeat in the same row or column if it belongs to two different runs.

Like Pips, the early wins come from the extremes. A run of two cells with a very small or very large sum has only a few possible digit pairs, and that is where you start.

Placement and region puzzles

LinkedIn Queens

Queens asks you to place one queen in each row, column and color region, with no two queens touching, diagonals included. It is a region-based puzzle like Pips, but the pieces are single markers rather than dominoes.

LinkedIn Tango

In Tango you fill a grid with two different symbols so each row and column has an equal number of each, and no more than two of the same symbol sit next to each other. It is deduction at its plainest: every row and column is a tiny constraint.

LinkedIn Zip

Zip has you draw one path through the grid that connects the numbers in order and fills every cell. It is less about arithmetic and more about spotting forced moves.

All three of these are among the daily games described on LinkedIn’s help page.

A quick way to choose

• You like the number side of Pips: Kakuro or KenKen.
• You like the regions: Queens.
• You want the classic: Sudoku.
• You want something fast: Tango or Mini Sudoku.

Getting better at Pips

Read every region rule before you place a tile. A one-cell sum region names its pip outright, and an equals region or an extreme sum cuts your options down quickly. Start there.

Every placement changes what the surrounding regions can hold, so after each domino go back and recheck the neighbours. Pips is a chain of eliminations, not independent puzzles. Place doubles early if you can: a double reads the same whichever way you rotate it, so committing one inside an equals region cannot be the reason your board fails later.

Each day ships three boards, Easy, Medium and Hard, and you can undo freely, so use the Easy board to learn the rule types. If one region is blocking you, our Pips hints point at where to start without placing the dominoes for you.

Word Game Clues is an independent hint site and is not affiliated with The New York Times or any of the game publishers mentioned here.