Technology

Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalog.

Released in August 2025, Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.

Currently, if you're stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move on to the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.

How to play Pips

If you've ever played dominoes, you'll have a passing familiarity with how Pips is played. As we've shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don't necessarily have to match.

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The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible — and common — for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.

Here are common examples you'll run into across the difficulty levels:

• Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.

• Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.

• Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.

• Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.

• Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.

If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.

SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for October 21, 2026 Easy difficulty hints, answers for October 21 Pips

Number (10): Everything in this space must add up to 10. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally; 6-3, placed horizontally.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 6-3, placed horizontally; 2-4, placed horizontally.

Number (10): Everything in this space must add up to 10. The answer is 2-4, placed horizontally; 6-6, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 6-6, placed horizontally.

Less Than (2): Everything in this space must be less than 2. The answer is 1-0, placed horizontally.

Medium difficulty hints, answers for October 21 Pips

Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally.

Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed horizontally.

Not Equal: Everything in this space must be different. The answer 5-2, placed horizontally; 0-1, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (7): Everything in this space must be greater than 7. The answer is 5-1, placed horizontally; 3-4, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (5): Everything in this space must be greater than 5. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally; 2-6, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 2-6, placed horizontally.

Number (8): Everything in this space must add up to 8. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally.

Hard difficulty hints, answers for October 21 Pips

Less Than (3): Everything in this space must be less than 3. The answer is 2-2, placed vertically.

Greater Than (3): Everything in this space must be greater than 3. The answer is 4-1, placed vertically.

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-2, placed vertically.

Less Than (3): Everything in this space must be less than 3. The answer is 2-0, placed vertically.

Greater Than (0): Everything in this space must be greater than 0. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally.

Equal (5): Everything in this space must be equal to 5. The answer is 5-5, placed vertically.

Number (9): Everything in this space must add up to 9. The answer is 3-6, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically.

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 0-0, placed vertically.

Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally; 4-5, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (1): Everything in this space must be greater than 1. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 4-5, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally.

Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 4-2, placed horizontally; 1-3, placed vertically.

Not Equal: Everything in this space must be different. The answer 3-4, placed horizontally; 1-5, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 1-3, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 1-5, placed vertically.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.

There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it'll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.

An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

If you find yourself stuck at any step of today's Hurdle, don't worry! We have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Hurdle: Everything you need to know to find the answers Hurdle Word 1 hint

Ashy.

Hurdle Word 1 answer

SOOTY

Hurdle Word 2 hint

Reward.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for October 21, 2026 Hurdle Word 2 Answer

PRIZE

Hurdle Word 3 hint

Cold precipitation.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for October 21, 2026 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Meanings for each word for Oct. 21, 2026 Hurdle Word 3 answer

SLEET

Hurdle Word 4 hint

Jacked.

Hurdle Word 4 answer

STOLE

Final Hurdle hint

Stocking material.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Games available on Mashable Hurdle Word 5 answer

NYLON

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Living in a dense neighborhood used to mean dealing with noise and parking. Now it means your neighbors can slow down devices in your own home without ever touching them. Your neighbors don't even need to do this on purpose, which is part of what makes it hard to fight against.

I'm generally pretty good at coming up with the right words to find what I need on Google. But every now and then, I run into a question where I don't quite know the right vocabulary to type into a search bar, or where it would take a paragraph to explain what I'm looking for. That's usually when I realize I've been staring at a problem for 20 minutes that I could solve in two if I just pointed my camera at it. Here are five times Google Lens came to my rescue.

Infrared (IR) remote controls have been commonplace since the early 1980s, and are still around today. Despite the development of Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Thread, and Matter, my TV still works using this old technology. Infrared has some important benefits that modern protocols still can't match.

Most tool buyers don't think much about where the electronics live inside their gear. You pick up a drill, it works, and you move on. Ryobi's ONE+ system makes a different choice than most of the industry, putting battery-management logic in the pack instead of the tool. That sounds like a big deal, but it doesn't seem to change much.

Netflix puts out a pretty wide array of original shows, ranging from massively popular icons like Stranger Things to questionable and poorly rated shows like Hype House. Sometimes, though, Netflix puts out some brilliant masterpieces that don't quite reach mainstream popularity, instead garnering cult followings or, more sadly, fading slowly into obscurity.

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I had a dream. A dream where I had a stable Ethernet connection in every corner of the house. But wiring up the whole place was impractical (and borderline impossible), so I've almost resigned myself to using Wi-Fi, which is famously unreliable in my area.

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A Texas man sentenced to 60 years in prison for armed robbery is seeking to overturn his conviction based on the use of Flock cameras to track his movements.

The man, 37-year-old Charles Brownlee, was found guilty of five armed robberies in 2024. According to his legal team, authorities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area used Flock cameras to monitor his vehicle's movements and create a "pattern of life" to tie him to the crimes, reported the Texas Tribune.

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Brownlee's legal team is arguing that this "pattern" was obtained through unconstitutional surveillance methods enabled by Flock camera networks. They contend police should have obtained a search warrant before accessing Flock databases, which surveil Texans via tens of thousands of Flock cameras across the state.

"Flock’s surveillance database indiscriminately collects a vast trove of locational data about Americans who drive or ride in cars. By capturing, storing, retrieving, and indexing this data, Flock gives police the power to find almost anyone and reconstruct their movements," wrote Brownlee’s legal team in a brief submitted to the 5th Circuit Court.

Brownlee previously sought to toss the Flock data before going to trial, but the judge denied the request.

In a case earlier this month, a federal judge ruled the use of Flock camera databases to track a drug trafficking suspect's movements across state lines was unconstitutional. The woman at the center of the case was found in possession of methamphetamine after a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officer ran her plate number through Flock databases and deemed her recent travels suspicious.

"Freedom from persistent, dragnet-style surveillance while in public is not a foreign concept in our society, and it is a reasonable expectation that society already accepts," Judge Sara E. Hill wrote in her decision at the time.

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Fall is here, and if your yard is starting to become overgrown by leaves, having a proper leaf blower that can actually handle heavier debris, like dry clippings on your driveway, can make getting yard chores done a lot easier. Ryobi's 40V HP Cordless Leaf Blower Bundle delivers all the power you need, and then some, as it has enough power to blast through damp leaves and even compacted grass, all without the need of straining over a pull start—or the hassle of mixing fuel. Right now, you can grab this complete kit (which includes a battery and charger) from The Home Depot and save 20% off an already affordable price.

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Making $15 million its opening weekend, You Can See Everything broke a record for the best opening of a documentary in a decade, according to Deadline. That record was briefly held by Melania, which made $7.1 million earlier this year. Making this achievement all the more remarkable, You Can See Everything is playing in fewer than 1,000 theaters across the U.S. and is nearly three hours long.

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And the hype is not dying down. Fans are not only taking to social media to talk spoilers but also urging others not just to see the movie, but to see it in theaters. But not for the reasons you might think.

Often, when critics say "see it in theaters," we mean that the cinematic spectacle a filmmaker has created deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible with a top-notch immersive stereo system to match. When fandoms urge folks to go to theaters, they might also mean that a big box office could lead to more movies like this being made. But You Can See Everything fans have a different reason: This film demands to be experienced in a crowd.

This sentiment can be found on numerous posts on Threads, ranging from minor spoilers to major ones. Then there are brief, spoiler-free reviews, like this one:

Credit: Threads screenshot

Meanwhile, on X, similar sentiments of enthusiasm were echoed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

On TikTok, some posted video of the lobby, following their screenings, where audience members stood around in groups to converse. While user Tyler Dema shared how watching You Can See Everything with a crowd was a terrific and unique experience. He explained, "Watching You Can See Everything in an theater packed with people is undoubtedly the way that god and Nathan Fielder intended it to be. We were all gooped and gasping and guffawing together. It...really gave you a sense of community at what a wild journey we all took together. It was beautiful."

This reflected my own experience at the film's New York Film Festival premiere, from which I wrote in my review, "As a movie, it's a hell of an experience. Personally, I gasped, shouted, laughed, and even gagged." What I left out is that I wasn't alone. The theater was booming with vocal explosions. And to be a part of that, all you have to do is go to the theater and experience it for yourself.

You Can See Everything Is Now playing in theaters.

Despite its age, the Wii Remote can still be a useful device. It includes Bluetooth connectivity, motion sensors, an infrared camera, and multiple physical buttons. These features make it a great option for interacting with your smart home, and there are a few ways that you may be able to get your Wii Remote to control Home Assistant.

Your carrier sees a lot more than you think it does, and it's all because everything you do is being logged. Before any of the encryption you're used to seeing kicks in, your phone has already sent your carrier a plain-text record of every site you're trying to reach. That happens constantly, in the background, for every app on your device, not just your browser.

You’ve just bought a new SSD and want to put it to the test, so you grab a large zip file and copy it between your two drives. Monitoring the transfer speed in real time seems like a straightforward way to see how fast your new SSD is.