Dear educators,

Hello and (almost) happy holidays! Remember that OzCLO 2023 (the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad for secondary schools) is coming up in March of next year. I am writing to you now to confirm that the OzCLO pre-competition training day will be held on Wednesday, February 15, 2023 from 10 am until noon on the UWA campus.

What: OzCLO training day: an introduction to language puzzles and techniques for critical reasoning about them.

For whom: the training day is for everyone! You are welcome to bring as many students as you like to the training day, even if they’re not going to compete. There’s no commitment, so the more, the merrier! The OzCLO competition itself will be for students from years 7 to 12 (note that this is a larger range than in previous years).

Training day, when and where:

• Wednesday, February 15, 2023
• 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
• Clews Lecture Theatre (room 243 in the Physics building), UWA Crawley campus.
• RSVP to this email address ([email protected]) by COB on Monday, February 13, 2023 if you plan on coming.

The actual OzCLO competition will then be held over two rounds in March 2023. Here’s everything you need to know about that:

1. Round 1, regional competition: 

1. 1. Wednesday, March 1, 2023
   2. Exact time TBA. (In 2022 it was held from 10:30 am – 1:30 pm, with the first hour for prep time and the second two for the competition. I will let you know once the times for the 2023 competition are announced.)
   3. Online only; join from your own school campus 

1. Round 2, national competition: 

1. 1. Wednesday, March 22, 2023
   2. Held in person on UWA campus (time, room, and building TBD)

How it works: Teams consist of four students. Schools can enter as many teams as they wish. All teams complete the same tasks, but they are ranked within their age level: Junior (years 7-10) or Senior (years 11-12). Teams are usually all Junior or all Senior students, though you can certainly enter a mixed-level team if you want; mixed teams compete in the Senior category.

Round 1 (March 1) is the regional (i.e., state) competition. Because it is held online, your students can participate from your school under your supervision, no matter where your school is. The top three Junior and top three Senior teams from this round will go on to Round 2 (March 22), the national competition, which takes place on campus here at UWA.

I have attached the 2023 brochure and poster. Please feel free to distribute and display these if you like!

How to register: Registrations will open on Monday, Jan 16 and close on Friday, February 24. The cost is $40 per team. Once registrations open, teachers should go to https://www.ozclo.org.au/registration/ to register themselves and their individual teams. (Note that this page has not yet been updated for 2023.)

(The registration page says to contact your local organiser “if you wish to compete offline.” This only applies to Round 1; if you are able to do Round 1 online, then there is no need to contact anyone. Everyone is strongly encouraged to do Round 1 online.)

How to prepare: In addition to attending the optional training session, you can find training materials on the OzCLO website (https://www.ozclo.org.au/training-materials/).