UKLO 2025

Subject–verb agreement

HintThe doer and the doing word wear matching badges.

The whyWhen the same ending appears on the doer and on the doing word, the verb is copying its subject's number. The catch is that the ending is only needed when the SUBJECT is plural — a plural object does not trigger it. Check a line with a plural object and a singular subject before you decide.

metathesis

HintOld English 'thridda' became 'third' by the same swap.

The whyIt looks like chaos in a verb table: one form seems to have its letters scrambled. In a puzzle it is a rule like any other: find WHEN the swap happens — after a certain prefix, say — test it on two roots, then apply it to the new words.

The indirect object

HintAdd 'to' and the phrase can move to the end of the sentence.

The whyThe direct object is what gets given, sent or lent; the indirect object is who receives it. English shows the difference by order ('gave the dog a bone') or with 'to' ('gave a bone to the dog'). Many languages mark the two with different case words or endings, so keeping them apart is the first step in any 'give / send / lend' puzzle.

A ditransitive verb

Hint'Give', 'send' and 'lend' are the classic ones.

The whyEnglish has plenty ('give', 'tell', 'show', 'buy'); a ditransitive line has three noun slots — doer, thing, receiver — so look for a marker on each object.

before

HintJapanese puts them after; this language is the mirror image.

The whyCase can be a separate word as easily as an ending. Look for a tiny word that always sits in front of the done-to noun and a different one in front of the receiver; then the nouns themselves need not change at all.

Social or physical distance

HintRead the brackets as data.

The whyGrammar can respond to the situation, not just to the words. A note in square brackets is part of the puzzle, not decoration: it is telling you that context chooses the form. The same idea underlies formal and informal 'you' in French or German — closeness picks the word.

Break it into parts

HintFind the seams.

The whyLanguages that resist borrowing coin new words from old parts, so 'television' might be built from 'far' plus 'seer' (German 'Fernseher') and 'glove' from 'hand' plus 'shoe'. Split a long word where you recognise a piece, work out what each piece means from the other words that share it, and the meaning of the whole assembles itself.

borrowing

HintMost languages just take 'computer' as it comes.

The whyA language that coins rather than borrows gives you a puzzle you can solve: its word for a gadget is built from pieces that already mean something. Work out the pieces from words you can already translate, and the gadget names assemble themselves — 'far' plus 'speaker' for a telephone, say.

dative

HintIt pairs with 'accusative' in a Latin lesson.

The whyAccusative for the thing acted on, dative for the one who receives — Latin, German and many puzzle languages keep the two apart. English 'to' does the dative's job. When a language uses little marker words, the dative marker is the one that appears only with receivers.

The Greek alphabet

HintCompare Α Β Γ with A B C and with А Б В.

The whyMost alphabets of Europe and western Asia are cousins, which is why so many of their letters keep roughly the same shape and sound. When you meet a new alphabet, the familiar-looking letters are your first foothold — but confirm each one inside a word you can already read before you trust it.

last; noun; prefix

HintWhere the verb sits, which word class carries the plural first, and how the listener is marked.

The whyThree things to establish before translating a single sentence: the order of the words, which word the plural ending belongs to, and how the persons are marked. A language that marks the person on the verb often has no separate pronoun for 'you' at all. Write the template, then fill it.

Its own name for the country

Hint'Germany' is not what Germans call it.

The whyEvery language has its own names for other countries — 'Deutschland', 'Allemagne' and 'Germany' are one place. So match by the letters you are sure of and by length, and expect a name to come out slightly different from the English. A near miss on one or two letters is usually the language's own form, not a wrong answer.