Pips game

Question

The Problem

The New York Times launched Pips in August 2025, introducing players to an innovative logic puzzle that combines traditional dominoes with spatial reasoning challenges. Within weeks, it gained a passionate following. But there was one major limitation: only one puzzle per day across all difficulty modes.

Players were finishing their daily puzzle in minutes and craving more. The community forums buzzed with requests for additional puzzles. Some tried replaying the same puzzle, while others desperately waited for midnight to get their next fix. The demand for continuous gameplay was clear, yet unmet.

The Solution

PlayPips delivers unlimited, procedurally generated Pips puzzles across three difficulty levels. Built as a progressive web application, it provides the same satisfying gameplay mechanics as the original while removing the artificial scarcity constraint.

Key features include:

• Infinite puzzle generation with consistent difficulty curves
• Three distinct modes (Easy, Medium, Hard) with appropriate complexity scaling
• Instant puzzle validation and hint system
• Responsive design that works seamlessly across desktop and mobile devices
• Zero authentication friction for immediate gameplay

Technical Implementation

Architecture Overview

The application leverages Next.js 15 with TypeScript for type safety and developer experience. The architecture prioritizes performance and scalability through several key decisions:

Frontend Stack:

• Next.js 15 with App Router for optimal performance
• React 19 for efficient rendering with server components
• Tailwind CSS v4 for rapid, consistent styling
• SWR for intelligent data fetching and caching

Backend Infrastructure:

• Cloudflare Pages for global edge deployment
• Cloudflare D1 (SQLite) for user data persistence
• Drizzle ORM for type-safe database operations
• Cloudflare Workers for serverless compute

Puzzle Generation Engine

The core challenge was creating a puzzle generator that produces solvable, engaging puzzles at scale. The algorithm employs constraint satisfaction techniques combined with difficulty heuristics:

interface PuzzleConstraints {
  regionCount: number;
  boardSize: GridDimensions;
  dominoSet: DominoTile[];
  difficultyFactors: {
    constraintDensity: number;
    ambiguityLevel: number;
    backtrackingDepth: number;
  };
}

Each puzzle undergoes validation through a solver that ensures exactly one solution exists. The difficulty calibration considers multiple factors: region size distribution, constraint type variety, and required lookahead depth for solution.

Performance Optimizations

The application achieves a 98 Lighthouse score with these optimizations:

1. Static Generation: Puzzle layouts pre-render at build time, reducing initial render by 70%
2. Code Splitting: Game logic loads progressively, keeping initial bundle under 50KB
3. Asset Optimization: Inlined SVG dominoes eliminate 20+ network requests per game
4. Edge Caching: Cloudflare CDN delivers assets with p95 latency under 50ms globally

Game state management employs an optimized immutable update pattern. React's memo and useMemo prevent unnecessary re-renders, while CSS transforms handle animations at 60fps without JavaScript overhead.

Responsive Design Strategy

The interface adapts intelligently to screen dimensions. On mobile devices, the domino selection area transforms into a scrollable carousel. Touch gestures feel natural with tap-to-rotate and drag-to-place mechanics. The game board scales proportionally while maintaining playability even on smaller screens.

Desktop users benefit from keyboard shortcuts, hover states for placement previews, and a wider layout that displays all available dominoes simultaneously.

Development Journey

The project evolved from weekend prototype to production app in 8 weeks. Initial vanilla JavaScript experiments validated the core mechanics. The TypeScript rewrite introduced type safety that caught edge cases in puzzle generation logic immediately.

Critical technical challenges we solved:

• Solvability Verification: Implemented a constraint propagation solver that validates puzzles in under 10ms
• Difficulty Calibration: Machine learning analysis of 10,000+ solve attempts established difficulty metrics
• Render Performance: Virtual DOM diffing reduced repaints by 85% during rapid domino movements
• Touch Precision: Custom gesture recognizer achieves 99% placement accuracy on mobile screens

Community feedback drove rapid iteration. We shipped the hint system within 48 hours of the first request. The undo feature followed a week later. Accessibility improvements, including high contrast and color-blind modes, launched after direct user collaboration.

Technical Decisions and Trade-offs

Choosing Cloudflare over Traditional Hosting:
The serverless architecture eliminates scaling concerns. Cloudflare's edge network ensures low latency globally without managing servers or regions. The trade-off is vendor lock-in, but the performance benefits justified this decision.

TypeScript Throughout:
Full TypeScript adoption increased initial development time but paid dividends in maintainability. Type safety caught numerous edge cases during puzzle generation logic development. The investment proved worthwhile as the codebase grew.

No Authentication Requirement:
Many puzzle games require accounts for progress tracking. PlayPips deliberately avoids this friction. Local storage maintains game history without privacy concerns. This decision prioritized accessibility over potential monetization features.

Future Roadmap

Several enhancements are planned based on community feedback:

Multiplayer Competitions:
Real-time puzzle races where players compete on identical boards. WebSocket connections through Cloudflare Durable Objects will enable synchronized gameplay with minimal latency.

Daily Challenge Mode:
While unlimited puzzles are the core offering, a shared daily challenge would create community moments. Players could compare completion times and share strategies.

Advanced Statistics:
Detailed analytics showing solving patterns, common mistakes, and improvement trends. This data could inform personalized difficulty adjustments.

Puzzle Creator:
A level editor allowing players to design and share custom puzzles. User-generated content would expand the puzzle library organically.

Lessons Learned

Building PlayPips reinforced several web development principles:

1. Start with the core experience: Getting basic gameplay right matters more than features
2. Performance is a feature: Fast load times and smooth interactions define user perception
3. Accessibility broadens reach: Supporting diverse input methods and visual needs expands the audience
4. Serverless scales effortlessly: Modern edge computing handles traffic spikes without intervention
5. Community feedback accelerates improvement: Users identify pain points faster than any QA process

Join the Project

PlayPips proves that modern web technologies excel at delivering polished gaming experiences. Our stack of Next.js 15, TypeScript, and Cloudflare's edge infrastructure scales effortlessly from prototype to production.

The project welcomes contributors. Current priorities include WebSocket multiplayer, advanced analytics, and internationalization. Whether you want to optimize puzzle generation algorithms, improve mobile UX, or add new game modes, your contributions matter.

• Play now: Pips Game
• Feedback: Feedback on Pips Game

Building PlayPips taught us that solving real problems beats adding features. We identified a simple frustration, removed an artificial limitation, and created value for thousands of daily players. The best products often do less, but do it exceptionally well.