The All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) is a contest in which secondary school students develop their own strategies for solving problems in fascinating languages from around the globe.
Students must use their ingenuity to solve Puzzles such as deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, decoding numerical spy codes, and interpreting ancient Mayan poetry.
All second level students, registered with a school or registered home-schooled in Ireland, both North and South, are eligible to participate. You cannot participate in a ‘gap year’ after you have left school.
Students may only participate in one national linguistics Olympiad in a school year (e.g. You can not take part in AILO and the UKLO / German Olympiad etc. at the same time).
The challenge can be taken by students at any stage in their second level studies, and we have two age groups – Junior Category (under 16) and Senior Category (16 and over).
The All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad has two main categories:
Both Junior and Senior Category students will take the same puzzles and be marked in the same way. However, we will award prizes and trophies to the winners of each category.
To prepare for AILO we suggest solving some sample puzzles and viewing previous years’ puzzles.
ADAPT provide problem solving workshops all around Ireland to help students prepare for the AILO competition. In these workshops sample puzzles are explained and worked through in detail.
ADAPT held over 30 workshops Nov 2020-Jan 2021. You can see the locations here.
Please note that if you or your students would like to attend a workshop, please register for AILO here.
The AILO competition is comprised of two rounds: