''People think of the University of Chicago and they think the students are weird,'' says Tom Howe, a junior from Atlanta. Having taken off his chicken suit, he is wearing a cardboard crown from a Burger King Kid's Meal. ''We want to show that intellectual doesn't necessarily mean stuffy.''

It is this philosophy -- that Chicago students can have fun if they really put their minds to it -- that gave birth to the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, a yearly celebration of looniness at a campus far better known for its Nobel laureates.

Putting aside term papers for a long weekend, hundreds of undergraduates in teams representing dormitories and student organizations range around the campus -- and, this year, the North American continent -- in search of items that will never be found in a course catalogue. The grand prize is $500, but the goal, says Mr. Howe, is loftier: ''to make the participants maximize their intellectual creativity.''

These were among the 339 items on the list for this year's scavenger hunt, released at the stroke of midnight on May 6:

No. 123: A computer suffering a year 2000 problem.

No. 262: Five Mensa membership cards.

No. 167: A 15-foot-tall monument to Grimace, the McDonald's Happy Meal character.