Every card in UKLO 2019

A logogram

HintChinese characters work this way — and so do '£', '&' and '7'.

WhyAn alphabet spells sounds, so you can read a word you have never seen; a logographic script gives each meaning its own sign, so you must learn it. In a puzzle built on such a script, stop trying to 'sound out' the signs — match them to meanings, and notice that a single sign can keep its meaning while its pronunciation changes.

A compound

HintEnglish 'toothbrush' and 'sunflower' are built the same way.

WhyTwo (or more) meaningful signs glued together make a new word whose meaning you can often guess from the parts — 'iron road' is a good picture of a railway. Puzzles exploit this: once you know a handful of signs, you can read, and write, words you have never met by combining them. Read the parts, then ask what thing they describe together.

head

HintThe part you would keep if you had to shorten the compound to one word.

WhyKnowing where the head sits tells you how to read an unfamiliar compound. English and Chinese put it last, so 'rain' + 'coat' names a coat. Some languages put it first, so 'road iron' would be the word for a railway. Work out the order from a compound you can already translate, then apply it to the rest.

Languages divide meaning differently

HintThink how many words a keen skier has for kinds of snow.

WhyA language grows fine distinctions where its speakers need them — island peoples for winds, farmers for soils, English for kinds of vehicle. When a puzzle hands you a list of precise words, do not look for one-word English equivalents; sort the English descriptions into the categories the language uses, and expect one category to cover several English items.

Start from the certainties

HintSome rows have two candidates, some have one — which kind do you fill in first?

WhyMatching puzzles are rarely one-to-one. Pin down the pairs that admit only one answer, cross them off, and the awkward ones shrink to a choice between two. When the instructions say a word may be used twice, believe them — an answer grid with every letter used exactly once is a red flag, not a tidy solution.

Its initial sound

HintThe ending is unchanged — so what is left to compare?

WhyThe Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland do this: a word's first consonant softens after certain words or in certain positions, while the rest stays the same. English hides its grammar in endings, so eyes trained on English never look at the start. If a puzzle word looks almost, but not quite, like one you know, compare the first letters before anything else.

unmarked

HintTwo of the three roles look exactly like the dictionary form.

WhyThis pattern trips up English speakers because our pronouns work the other way round: 'he' and 'him' split subject from object. In a puzzle, watch which noun gains an ending in 'X saw Y' and which noun looks the same in 'Y sat down' — that comparison is the whole key.

ergative

HintBasque and most Australian languages use it.

WhyThe name sounds forbidding but the idea is simple: mark the one who acts on another. In a data set the ending usually appears on names and nouns only in sentences that have an object — that is your test for spotting it. Languages of the Caucasus use it too.

accusative

HintLook at the lines where 'him' and 'them' appear, not 'he' and 'they'.

WhyEnglish keeps case only in its pronouns — I / me, she / her, they / them. In a puzzle, solve the pronouns separately: a language may mark nouns and pronouns on different systems, so never assume one table covers both.

Case endings

HintIf every word wears a badge saying 'doer' or 'done-to', its position stops mattering.

WhyEnglish relies on order — 'dog bites man' and 'man bites dog' differ only by position. A language that marks roles with endings can shuffle its words for emphasis, though the verb often settles at the end. Where the language is free-order the marking scheme may ignore order — but check: most UKLO schemes reward each word in the right place.

A semantic field

HintNotice which of the puzzle's dozen verbs share one kind of meaning.

Why'Crimson', 'scarlet' and 'ruby' sit in one; so do a language's dozen words for rain. The task is to find the boundaries between the words, not one English word for each.

first; before; after

HintWhere the verb sits, where 'the' sits, where the describing word sits.

WhyEach fact is a check you can run on the data. Find the verb: is it always the opening word? Find the small word matching 'the': is it in front of its noun, on its own? Find the describing word: does it follow the thing it describes? A puzzle from this family usually turns on at least two of the three at once.