Planet

The smartest person on the planet  

Marilyn Mach vos Savant lives in the outer galaxies of intelligence, way, way out there past presidents and doctors and Trivial Pursuit champions, out in the remote reaches of knowledge and perception that few of us will ever visit.

Vos Savant - whose last name, coincidentally, means scholar or wise man - is so smart that she could chop her IQ in half and still be above average. She could lop off 95 points and still qualify for Mensa, the high IQ society.

Until about three years ago, the world`s smartest person made her living in real estate. Her IQ was like a secret family recipe, information to be divulged only selectively. Now, though, she has sacrificed privacy to the insatiable god of marketing.

In April, she published her first book, Omni IQ Quiz Contest, (McGraw- Hill Paperbacks, $9.95), 148 pages of questions designed to test resourcefulness and intelligence.

What a nice public relations move, her publisher decided, if she were to submit her IQ scores to the Guinness Book of World Records, whose previous IQ record-holders, a trio of men, sound by comparison like candidates for remedial reading.

Their IQs are a paltry 197, a mere 97 points above the average. She logs in at 230.

Still, as biographical statistics go, an IQ of 230 is a guaranteed party-stopper. For some reason, a reason she professes not to fully understand, men are particularly unsettled by the news.