About 13,000 students and adults from around the world will converge on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus to attend the 26th annual Odyssey of the Mind World Finals May 21-24.
Participants will come from throughout the United States and about 20 other countries including China, Germany, Poland and Kazakhstan. The majority of attendees will stay on the CU-Boulder campus and in local hotels.
The event challenges students in kindergarten to college to come up with the most original and imaginative ways to solve a selection of problems. Problems include building structures that support as much weight as possible and presenting an original performance using three different methods of communication ranging from primitive to futuristic.
More than 760 teams consisting of five to seven students will participate. Each team selected at least one of five problems to solve and will compete against other teams in their age bracket who tackled the same problem.
All of the teams worked for months to develop their solutions and most advanced through earlier rounds of competition in their states or countries before making it to the finals. The teams are judged on criteria such as quality, originality and success in meeting their chosen problem's requirements.
This is the fourth year that CU-Boulder has hosted the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals. The competition also was held on campus in 1989, 1992 and 2002.
Odyssey of the Mind is an international program whose mission is to develop creative-thinking skills. The program began in 1978 and has grown to include students from all over the world.
For more information about the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals, visit the Web site at .