Sri Lanka's route to the International Olympiad in Linguistics starts here.
Sample problems
These are gentler than a real contest paper, but they are the same kind of thinking. Try each one on paper before opening the solution. That is where the learning is.
01
An unfamiliar way of writing numbers, dates, names or measurements. You are given a handful of examples and asked to extend the system.
02
A set of facts about people, objects or events that fit together in exactly one way, if you read every clue precisely enough.
03
A machine, a game or a process whose behaviour you can observe but whose rule is hidden. Find the rule, then predict what happens next.
04
Counting, ordering and reachability: what is possible, what is impossible, and how few moves it takes to get there.
On the island of Naru, numbers are written like this:
Solution
The word ba attaches to a number word and multiplies it by five; anything written after it is added on. So nau-ba sol is (2 × 5) + 3 = 13, which matches.
(a) nau-ba is 2 × 5 = 10.
(b) 17 = (3 × 5) + 2, so 17 is sol-ba nau.
Amara, Bhagya, Chamath and Dilani each solved a different number of problems: one solved 1, one solved 2, one solved 3 and one solved 4.
Solution
From the second clue, Amara and Bhagya are consecutive: (1,2), (2,3) or (3,4).
If Amara solved 3 and Bhagya 4, then Chamath and Dilani have 1 and 2, and since Chamath solved more, Dilani has 1, but Dilani did not solve the fewest. Rejected.
If Amara solved 2 and Bhagya 3, then Chamath and Dilani have 1 and 4, so Dilani has 1 again. Rejected.
So Amara solved 1 and Bhagya 2, leaving 3 and 4 for Dilani and Chamath. Chamath solved more, so:
Amara 1, Bhagya 2, Dilani 3, Chamath 4.
A building has floors numbered 1 to 15. Its lift has only two buttons. U takes you up 8 floors. D takes you down 5 floors. If a press would take the lift outside the building, nothing happens.
You are standing in the lift on floor 1.
Solution
(a) One press from floor 1 can only reach floor 9 (D would leave the building). From 9, U would need floor 17, so the only move is D to floor 4. From 4, U reaches 12. That is three presses: 1 → 9 → 4 → 12. Two presses cannot work, since after one press you are on floor 9 and neither button reaches 12 from there.
(b) No. Following the only available moves from floor 1 you pass through 9, 4, 12, 7, 15, 10, 5, 13, 8, 3, 11, 6, 14 and 2, every floor in the building. So every floor is reachable.
A quicker way to see (b): U then D moves you up 3 floors overall, and repeating that from floor 1 reaches 1, 4, 7, 10, 13; starting instead with a D-first pattern shifts you into the other two remainder classes, and together they cover all fifteen floors.
Past papers from the International Olympiad in Linguistics are published openly and are the best preparation there is, but they are considerably harder than our online round, so do not be discouraged. We publish our own problems and solutions after each round, and they accumulate here.