Eight Hall County teams — all in South Hall County — took first or second places in the Georgia Odyssey of the Mind competition Saturday — and qualified for the World Finals in May.

Odyssey of the Mind is a creative problem-solving competition, started by a professor in New Jersey in 1978.

Hall County schools had five first-place finishes and three second places. Davis Middle School won two first places; Da Vinci Academy and Flowery Branch High School each won a first and second; World Language Academy won a first and Martin Technology Academy took a second.

The World Finals will be held May 25-28 at Iowa State University. More than 800 teams from the U.S. and about 25 other countries are expected to compete.

Another five teams from Hall County qualified for the state finals, held at Columbus State University. Teams from Johnson High School, Davis, Flowery Branch and Da Vinci also competed.

The top two teams in each category qualify for the World Finals. The state competition has five problems and three divisions — elementary, middle and high — for each problem.

Georgia sends 30 teams to the World Finals, and Hall County will be eight of those teams — nearly 27 percent of the state’s total.

The problems were “no cycle-recycle,” “something fishy,” “Aesop gone viral,” “stack attack” and “fins, furs, feathers and friends.”

This is the sixth straight year Davis Middle School has taken first in the state for the structure problem (which was “stack attack” this year), coach Kim Carroll said, and sixth year to go to the World Finals.

Carroll is also the coach for the “stack attack” team at Flowery Branch that also took first. She has two co-coaches, Michelle Torres and Donna Arendall.

The problem requires the teams to “stack” weights on a platform that rests on a very small balsa wood structure until it collapses.

Davis Middle School’s team had 1,365 pounds when its weights fell — 590 pounds more than second-place Wildwood Christian Academy.

Flowery Branch’s team stacked 1,190 pounds before its weights fell — more than double the 577.5 the team from Gwinnett Online Campus.

Hall County had six teams compete in the World Finals in 2015, according to Heather Scharmer, one of the Da Vinci coaches. She said two of the six were from Da Vinci; teams from the school have gone to the international competition the past four years.

Other Da Vinci coaches include Melissa Madsen, Lisa Duetemeyer, Jenn Lennox and Jody Key.

Darcie and Aaron Turpin coach the teams from World Language Academy and Davis Middle School that took first places in elementary and middle school for “something fishy.” Darcie Turpin said she has coached for eight years and three teams have qualified for the World Finals.

Teams generally start preparing for the competitions in September, several coaches said. Teams pick a problem, “brainstorm” for the approach they will take, then write a script, work on sets, costumes and props and rehearse.

Key, who coaches at Johnson High School and also has worked with Odyssey teams at West Hall Middle School and Martin Elementary School, said the students work about 150 hours on the problem during the school year.