Bulletins from the club.
From Three Hours to Six: What Actually Changes Between a National Round Paper and an IOL Paper
A national open round gives you roughly 25 minutes a problem; the IOL gives you over an hour. Four things that change when the clock triples, and what to train differently.
How to Mark Your Own Linguistics Olympiad Practice Paper When There Is No Solution Sheet
Worked solutions do not exist for every past paper. A five-band self-marking rubric, the regeneration test, and the four ways students quietly over-mark themselves.
The Deadline Before the Deadline: Planning a 2026-27 Linguistics Olympiad Autumn Backwards From the Sitting
Registration for the coming cycle is reported to close earlier than usual. An autumn planned backwards from the sitting, with compression options at 16, 10, 5 and 2 weeks.
How to Write About the Linguistics Olympiad in a University Application (2027 Entry)
Where the olympiad belongs in the three UCAS questions and a 150-character activity line, how to describe an award honestly, and four rewrites from generic to specific.
Set Your Own Linguistics Olympiad Problem: The Practice Method That Finds the Holes in Your Understanding (2026)
Solving a problem tests what you know. Building one exposes what you only half-know. A step-by-step construction method, plus the delete-a-row sufficiency test.
Linguistics Olympiad Registration, Explained: Why You Never Sign Up for the IOL Itself (2026-27 Cycle)
You cannot sign up for the IOL directly – only a national contest can send you. What actually gates entry, and a backwards runway that survives a moving deadline.
Beyond the Olympiad: What Linguistics Actually Is as a University Subject (2026)
The olympiad rehearses one corner of a much larger subject. What linguistics degrees actually contain, which skills carry over, and who genuinely should not choose it.
Where Do You Actually Stand? A 45-Minute Linguistics Olympiad Self-Diagnostic (2026)
Three original mini-problems, 45 minutes, 24 marks. Score yourself honestly and get a specific answer to the question every beginner asks: what should I train next?