Bulletins from the club.
How IOL National Teams Are Chosen: Inside NACLO, Selection Rounds and Travel Funding (2026)
NACLO is the North American feeder into the IOL: two rounds, a team of four to eight, and an eligibility rule that shuts out mainland-school students.
Is Linguistics Actually Your Olympiad? An Honest Way to Choose Where to Spend Your Training Years
Deciding between olympiads is not about prestige. It is about which bottleneck you can clear. A four-axis framework for choosing whether linguistics deserves your years.
Why Strong Students Still Lose Marks at a Linguistics Olympiad: Eight Failure Modes and How to Diagnose Your Own
You cracked the rule but the score came back low. Eight recurring failure modes behind lost marks at linguistics olympiads, plus a self-marking method to find yours.
IOL 2027 Is Bangkok: What Is Confirmed, What Is Not, and How to Plan the Year From August 2026
IOL 2026 closed in Bucharest on 2 August and ioling.org now lists Bangkok as host of the 24th IOL. Here is what is confirmed, what is not, and how to plan.
Computational Linguistics Problems Explained: Encodings, Sort Orders and Rule Machines (2026)
The algorithmic family of linguistics olympiad problems – encodings, sort orders, rule cascades, ambiguity and alignment – with worked mini-examples and no programming required.
Best Solution, High Distinction, Merit: What Linguistics Olympiad Award Tiers Actually Reward (2026)
Score tiers and Best Solution awards measure two different things: what the IOL publishes, what a national award ladder looks like, and what makes a solution stand out.
How to Read Linguistics Olympiad Data: IPA, Diacritics and the Pinyin Trap (2026)
A practical guide to the symbols on a linguistics olympiad page: IPA marks, length and tone diacritics, glossing abbreviations, and the pinyin habits that mislead Chinese solvers.
IOL 2026 Results, Decoded: 14 Golds Out of 255 Contestants in Bucharest
The 23rd IOL concluded in Bucharest on 2 August 2026: 255 contestants, 84 medals, 14 of them gold. What the award rates and China's scores demand of a contestant.