Since the mid-1960s, problem-solving competitions in linguistics for secondary school students have been taking place at various locations around the world.
There is also an International Linguistic Olympiad in which students from many countries compete, as well as dozens of local competitions held in individual towns and schools across Europe and the USA.
From 2001 to 2006, the program existed as an informal, web-based educational activity known as the Linguistics Challenge.
[1][2] In 2019, following a request from the US Olympic Committee that NACLO comply with the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 (aka the Ted Stevens Act), which grants exclusive rights of usage in the US of the words Olympic and Olympiad to the Olympic Committee, the contest agreed to change its name to the North American Computational Linguistics Open competition.
The first round was open to all contestants and consisted of a three-hour, five-problem written examination.