Mind Games
They’re a quirky group, a pack of seven clever kids that seems more like the cast of a sitcom than a team of academic champions.
Perhaps the sitcom will come later. For now, the 1996 Pasadena High School Odyssey of the Mind team is busy making history.
Through a series of stunning cerebral victories, the team has made it to the Odyssey of the Mind’s May 29 World Finals. It’s the first time that Pasadena High will be represented in the finals. The students are thrilled. And they’re headed to Iowa.
“One of my teachers was there when they announced that as first-place winners the team was going on a round trip to Ames, Iowa,” said Patrick Maginn, 16. “He said, ‘What was second place? Two trips to Iowa? For third place do you have to live there?’ ”
The students said the championships could be held in Hades for all they care. They’re not going to Iowa to sightsee--they’re going there to win.
Students from all 50 states and 23 foreign countries will compete. Included in that mix are teams from Burroughs High in Burbank and Nogales High School in La Puente.
With so much brain power in one place, the Pasadena students said they know winning the world finals won’t be easy. But these kids have a secret weapon they hope will give them an edge: They’re funny.
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“If you can make a judge fall out of his chair because he’s laughing so hard, you’ll win,” Maginn said.
It’s a bit more complicated than that, said Cathy Maginn, Patrick’s mom, team coach, Odyssey of the Mind board member and voice of reason.
Unlike standard stuffy academic decathlons, the Odyssey is a creative affair that emphasizes students’ ingenuity instead of memorization skills. The competition is a problem-solving project in which teams select one of five open-ended questions and come up with a solution without the help of anyone, including the coach, Maginn said. The students present their projects at each level of competition.
For example, rather than rattle off the laws of physics that allow a wheelchair to move, students from Nogales High had to build a wheelchair. And it had to be more helpful for the disabled than anything on the market.
There are several facets to the program and a Web site (https://www.odyssey.org) of information about the competition. With long hours of work involved, the ability to get along well as a team is critical, Cathy Maginn said.
All but one of the Pasadena team members had competed before this year. Some had worked together on past problems. And based on what each knew of the others’ skills, the students voted (though not unanimously, grumbled Azar Mortazavi, 15) to choose Problem 3, “the classics problem.”
The classics problem challenges students to combine visual art with poetry. The team was instructed to reproduce a French Impressionist painting and write a poem relating to it. Then they had to reverse the process and paint a picture that conveys the imagery in a famous poet’s work. Next the group had to come up with a clever way to present the poem and works of art at the competitions.
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The problem had the team stumped until Patrick Maginn remembered that every Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song. (Try it, it works.) Using that as a catalyst, the group decided to present an untitled Dickinson poem in a farcical Gilligan rip-off, and the project became as easy as making telephones out of coconuts.
The crew constructed a classroom scene that easily converts into the set of “Gilligan’s Island.” Classroom and island backdrops are painted on two shower curtains, and the character of Ginger is painted on Christopher Loop, 16.
“I already owned the bra,” he said.
The cross-dressed Ginger costume cracked up the judges, but Charla Plumb’s combination Mr. and Mrs. Howell outfit earned the team the coveted Ranatra Fusca Award, a recognition of creativity that is independent of competition scoring, Cathy Maginn said.
The front side of Charla, 15, is a convincing Mr. Howell, decked out in a Hawaiian shirt and khakis. But from the back, she wears a dress and a Mrs. Howell mask.
The gang’s presentation reads like an original “Gilligan’s Island” script. In the Odyssey of the Mind episode, a reproduction of Renoir’s Grenouillere (a la Plumb) washes up to shore and inspires Gilligan (Travis Takenouchi, 14) to paint a picture of a “little, little boat” lost at sea.
Gilligan tries to show off his painting, but a high tide sweeps it away to the ever-elusive main island, and--to quote any TV Guide description of the real show--hilarity ensues.
