An extraterrestrial species has visited the authors of April Fools Day Contest 2025 while they were preparing problems. They call themselves the "Balikons" and expressed interest in chatting with humans. Although they can make sounds that are similar to human speech, they seem to prefer communicating by writing using a variety of media.

Figure 1. A Balikon entity communicates with a human linguist (2025, colorized)

Fortunately, there is a linguistics expert in the author team. With some effort, they were eventually able to fully understand the Balikon language. The following is a table of some example phrases they translated.

Balikon script	Latin script	Translation
	balikon	Balikon
	balikong shas	three Balikons
	fibucho shezali kin chakog leshas	buy shezali$$$^{\text{∗}}$$$ for twelve chakos$$$^{\text{†}}$$$
	fibuchog zinfa bashin	(I) bought the wrong pen
	shons ze tes to les konbilo lonshonletashashaleteshates	five plus seven minus one modulo 998244358

Table 1. A few pieces of text in the Balikon language

After some conversations, the Balikons learned about a popular human activity called competitive programming and were excited to try. In fact, they just created their first problem. Please check it out!