Ireland wins Honourable Mention at IOL 2025 in Taiwan

(L – R, Michael Costello, Patrick Chen, Aidan Alexander and Kevin Lin)

The team representing Ireland at the International Linguistics Olympiad has just returned from Taipei, Taiwan. The team was made up of Michael Costello (St Kilian’s Deutsche Schule), Aidan Alexander (St Mac Dara’s Community College), Patrick Chen (St Gerard’s School Bray) and Kevin Lin (Adamstown Community College). All four students did us proud with Aidan taking home an honourable mention in the individual competition.

The Irish team is made up of the top four students from the 2025 All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) which is run by ADAPT, the Research Ireland Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, at the School of Computing, Dublin City University.

In the IOL, the students come up against over 220 of the top linguistic problem-solvers, from 48 countries and territories to tackle some of the toughest puzzles in logic and linguistics in little-known languages from all over the globe. The students faced a 6-hour individual round paper on Tuesday 22nd. They also sat a challenging 4-hour team round on Friday 25th. The students got to take part in  IOL traditions like Jeopardy!, Karaoke, a Taipei city tour and a visit out to the coast to the Yehliu Geopark.

The AILO finals see teenagers solve puzzles that require lateral thinking skills and the ability to think outside the box. Students must analyse the language data they are given to work out the ‘rules’ of the new language. These transferable skills are critical in preparing young people for a wide range of careers in computing, linguistics and language.  

Sample puzzles from the Olympiad can be downloaded at https://ailo.adaptcentre.ie/sample-puzzles/