College kids wise up

Some of the ACT’s best and brightest young minds will participate in brain-bending challenges at the ANU School of Language Studies today.

ACT high school students from Marist, Daramalan, Lake Tuggeranong and Radford colleges will compete in the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad (OZCLO).

The students will compete in teams to solve fascinating language puzzles. The Olympiad tests students’ abilities in code-breaking, pattern recognition and understanding of how languages work.

A typical Olympiad round consists of a two-hour competition in which students work in small teams to solve around five problems. The puzzles mostly derive from patterns of regularities found in the grammar, sounds and writing systems of languages, as well as the games that speakers play with languages, including ‘pig latin’.

Prizes include copies of the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary and vouchers for the Co-op Bookshop. The overall winning team will represent Australia at the International Linguistics Olympiad in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Find out more about the School of Language Studies