UKLO 2010

A container or a measurement, like a cup or spoonful

HintWhich English words could sit in that gap before 'of'?

The whyThe frame round an unknown word gives away its kind: 'a ___ of' wants a dish or a measure, 'four ___s' wants something you can count, 'too much ___' wants a liquid or a mass. You can sort every invented word on a menu this way without translating a single one.

countable

HintLook at what 'a' and 'four' can go in front of.

The whyCountable nouns take 'a' or a number and have a plural; uncountable nouns take 'some' or 'much' and have none. The company a noun keeps tells you which kind it is.

Ambiguity

HintAsk which noun 'old' is standing next to, and whether it could reach further.

The whyOne wording, two meanings: the adjective can attach to 'men' alone or to the whole pair, and nothing in the English decides. Some languages can remove the doubt, because an adjective that agrees with its noun may show by its ending which noun it belongs to. Spot both readings before you translate.

after

HintCompare where 'black' sits in French 'chat noir'.

The whyEnglish fixes the adjective before its noun; Spanish, Italian and French usually put it afterwards — French 'chat noir' is literally 'cat black'. Work the order out from the data rather than importing English; once you know it, a phrase like 'cats black and dogs' shows which noun the adjective is sitting beside, and therefore which noun it describes.

A second verb

HintLook for the same word used on its own, then ask what English replaces it with.

The whySome languages string verbs together where English uses a little word like 'up', 'down' or 'here': 'carry pot climb' for 'carry the pot up'. The tell-tale is a word that appears both at the end of longer sentences and by itself as a whole sentence. Once you have the pattern, build new sentences the same way: main verb, then object, then the direction verb.

Loanwords

HintWhere did the two come from originally? Perhaps not from this language at all.

The whyA loanword is a word borrowed from another language. Borrowed words often keep the habits of their source and so break the borrowing language's own patterns — English 'pizza', 'ski' and 'yacht' break English spelling rules in the same way. When a rule fits nearly everything, the leftovers may be foreign rather than proof that your rule is wrong.

The sound before it

HintSay 'kick' and 'hug' with a finger on your throat and feel the difference.

The whyThe -ed ending matches its neighbour: after the 'k' of 'kick' it sounds like 't'; after the 'g' of 'hug' it sounds like 'd'. Puzzle languages do the same, often in their spelling, so one suffix turns up in two forms with one meaning. The rule lives in the sound just in front of the ending — never in the meaning.

A voiced consonant

HintPut a hand on your throat and say 'zzz' rather than 'sss'.

The whyEvery consonant is either voiced (b, d, g, v, z, m, n, l, r, w) or voiceless (p, t, k, f, s, sh, ch, 'th' as in thin). Each voiceless one usually has a voiced partner made in the same place in the mouth: p/b, t/d, k/g, f/v, s/z. Languages often let an ending copy the voicing of the sound before it, which is why a suffix can be spelt with 'd' in one word and 't' in the next.

harmony

HintFinnish and Hungarian are famous for it.

The whyThe vowels in a word agree, so an ending is spelt one way after a root with 'front' vowels (e, i, ö, ü) and another after 'back' vowels (a, o, u). In a puzzle, when a suffix shows up as -lok, -lek, -lük with identical meaning, look at the vowels of the root — in Turkish the last one — because that is what is choosing the spelling.

Transliteration

HintWhat a tourist does to read a Greek street sign aloud.

The whyTransliteration swaps one script for another: a Moscow metro sign in Cyrillic can be rewritten in our letters so you can say it, without translating anything. Puzzles with metro maps, brand names or place names in an unfamiliar alphabet are transliteration puzzles: pair a name you can recognise with its spelling, harvest the letters, then read the rest — and a sign shaped like one of our letters need not sound like it.

person; again; not

HintEach gap takes one everyday word: one names a human, one says 'once more', and one is the plainest negative.

The why'-er' in 'baker' names the person who does it; 're-' in 'rewrite' means again; 'un-' in 'unhappy' means not. An affix carries a stable meaning wherever it goes, which is what makes puzzles solvable: if one ending turns 'bake' into 'baker' and 'sing' into 'singer', it will do the same to any other verb. Languages differ in which meanings they hand to an affix, never in the principle.

adjective

HintWhat word class is 'homeless' in 'a homeless man'?

The why'homeless' is 'lacking a home', 'careless' is 'lacking care'. Many languages have a suffix doing the same job, and puzzles often pair it with a 'person who does' suffix so that the two endings can be swapped on one root. Find the root first, then the two endings — and expect each ending to change its spelling to match the root.