Preparation guide
How to prepare for NACLO
Solve puzzles in languages you have never seen, with no prior linguistics knowledge required.
Some preparation needed · Grades 6 to 12, primarily aimed at grades 9 to 12. The Open Round is open to all interested middle school and high school students.
Where the points actually are
NACLO is almost pure practice. There is no syllabus to learn, so the entire preparation is working past problems until you recognise the recurring puzzle families: agglutinative morphology, number systems, kinship terms, writing systems, phonological rules. Twenty past problems is a serious preparation.
Topic breakdown
- 01Morphology puzzles
- Languages that build words from stacked affixes. Solve by aligning translations and isolating what changes.
- 02Number systems
- Base-20, body-part counting, multiplicative systems. Common and highly learnable once you have seen three.
- 03Writing systems
- Scripts to decipher, from syllabaries to logographies. Look for repeated symbols and word-length correspondence first.
- 04Phonology
- Sound change rules and their ordering. Write the rules formally rather than guessing case by case.
- 05Computational problems
- Some problems concern algorithms over language: parsing, encoding, ambiguity. These reward the same reasoning as the rest.
A study plan that works backwards from the date
- Autumn Work three past papers untimed. Read the official solutions in full, including for problems you solved, because the solution shows the systematic method.
- December Practise timed. Three hours for six to eight problems means roughly 25 minutes each, and pacing is what separates scores.
- January Target the puzzle families you scored worst on. NACLO tags its archive by type, so this is straightforward.
Tips that come from the format itself
- Every past problem and solution is published free on the official site. That archive is the whole preparation resource.
- Write the rule down in words before you translate anything. Points are awarded for stated rules.
- Skim all problems first and start with the one whose data looks most regular.
- Bring nothing but a pen. No dictionaries, no devices, and none would help anyway.
Practice resources
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NACLO official site with the full problem archive
Registration, host site list, and every past problem with full solutions.
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NACLO practice problems
Organised by year, with official solutions. The single preparation resource you need.
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International Linguistics Olympiad past problems
Harder international papers, free, useful for the Invitational Round.
Past papers and official materials
- Complete NACLO archive with solutions
Published free by the organisers.
Skills this builds
- Pattern recognition
- Deductive reasoning
- Working systematically under time pressure
- Tolerance for unfamiliar notation