Samples

If the puzzle on Ancient Greek below “looks Greek to you”, don’t panic – we guarantee that no previous knowledge of Greek is necessary to solve it.

All of the information you need to solve the puzzles below is in the puzzles themselves. All you need to add is some analytical reasoning and tricky thinking.

Once you’ve mastered these puzzles from national-level competition, why not try your skills against our past international-level problems? They’re difficult enough to puzzle professional linguists… but still solvable by secondary-school students.

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Download sample problems


Download sample problem solutions


Easy Problems

  1. Georgian Countries
  2. Ancient Greek
  3. Aragonese
  4. Japanese Braille
  5. Lalana Chinantec
  6. Molistic
  7. Persian

Intermediate Problems

  1. Kazakh
  2. Taikyoku Shōgi
  3. Tupí and Guaraní
  4. Inuktitut Numbers
  5. Basque Numbers
  6. Basque Kinship

Hard Problems

  1. Icelandic Kinship
  2. Manam
  3. Guaraní Verbs
  4. Aymara
  5. Toki Pona