Sample Puzzles

AILO challenges you to use your logic and problem-solving skills to solve some of the world's toughest puzzles in language and linguistics.

No previous knowledge of linguistics or a second language is necessary; instead you must use your ingenuity to decode unfamiliar languages.

A great many questions from previous linguistics olympiads are available on the internet. Among the fascinating examples are ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Quechua Incan language, and the early Aztec language, Nahuatl.

Sample Training Sets for AILO 2012

• Sample Set 1
• Sample Set 2
• Sample Set 3
• Sample Set 4

Try more out for yourself

• Two easy problems, plus their answers: Chinese Football and Japenese
• Another two easy problems
• A List of fun problems (ranging from easy to hard) from the UKLO website
• The test booklet used in the 2009 AILO competition, and the answers and marking scheme
• A large collection of problems, of different levels of difficulty, used in the North American Olympiad
• Finally even larger collection of problems, including those from the International Linguistics Olympiads. (Log in as 'guest', password 'guest'.)
  If you click 'browse all', you'll see a long list of test questions, mostly paired with their solutions. Not all are written in English, but a large number are.