Lendon Best, Barbara Holt Jones.“San Diego Mensa used to have a reputation as a bunch of eggheads. Now we’re getting too much publicity on the frivolous activities."

“Our motto is the same as that of Penthouse: A pretty face is not enough,” Lendon Best, treasurer of the San Diego County chapter of Mensa, tells a smiling young man at an East County open house to recruit new members. The wry humor is appropriate, coming from a man representing an organization that claims an atmosphere “tolerant, forthright, at times profound, witty, even ribald.” And the words flow easily from the fifty-four-year-old Best, who, although a native of Mississippi, has a patrician air accentuated by a British accent honed during years overseas as a freelance management consultant. Best’s words, it so happens, are accurate. While a pretty face may be a plus for a Mensan, it won’t open club doors. An IQ in the top two percent of the world’s population will. That translates to a 1300-point total on Scholastic Aptitude Tests, 150 on Graduate Record Exams, or several other test results that are the equivalent of at least a 136 IQ.

The entrance requirements to Mensa may be clearly defined, but the organization itself is far less so. Mensa literature terms the organization a “high-IQ social and service club,” though that definition seems incomplete and even misleading. Yes, a high IQ is required; and the San Diego chapter of the organization is socially oriented, holding luncheons, discussion groups, and activities that conjure up visions of mental “meet markets” — a weekly intelligent happy hour, for one. The problem with the Mensa definition begins with the term “service club. ” The phrase implies a group prone to adopt orphans overseas or seek out needy families in the community. However, those are not Mensa activities. “One of the complaints we hear from some of our members is that we don’t do enough,” says Best. “We don’t give turkeys and vegetables to the poor. Some people want us to save the world.”

The club does give service to its own members, though, providing, among other offerings, what Best terms a “warm womb in which they have a bond of shared suffering.” That shared suffering includes childhoods during which less gifted classmates hung “egghead” epithets on those with Mensa-level IQs. “Most of us had problems with adjustment as children,” says one member. “At a time when you wanted very much to be accepted, you knew you were different.” Mensans tend to describe the acceptance they feel in the club as if it were a religious experience. “For seventeen years I was a closet Mensan,” says Ginny, who taught junior high school and is now selling real estate. “In my generation (she’s forty-one years old), women weren’t supposed to be smart. I remember my first Mensa gathering; I could talk about anything. Tears came to my eyes. The men here are really beautiful — not only intelligent, but sensitive.” Says Best, “People considered shy outside Mensa are drawn out here, like being born again. They’re inspired to renew the process of self-development.”

That may have been one of the aims of Professor Sir Cyril Burt, the Briton credited in Mensa literature as the group’s founder. Burt, who at the time held the chair of psychology at London University, is said to have introduced the idea for a meeting of the minds, a panel of high intelligence, during a BBC broadcast in 1945. It was conceived at the outset as a “round-table society where no one has special precedence” — hence the name, Mensa, the Latin word for table. Burt went on to become the society’s first president, and Mensa has gone on to claim 28,000 members in fourteen countries, by recent estimates — a hefty sum but a mere drop in the intellectual bucket when one figures that the top two percent of the world’s population includes some 80 million people. Annual dues are twenty dollars, most of which goes for printing and convention expenses.

The San Diego chapter, about twelve years old, is said to be the fastest growing. There were a mere 150 San Diego Mensans a decade ago, when current chapter president Barbara Holt Jones, a middle-aged math teacher turned real estate saleswoman, took the Mensa qualifying exam “on a whim.” The chapter has blossomed to 1200 members today, though a minority participate in club events. “There are about 200 to 300 active members,” Jones says. “You seem to have the same people in the groups. ” Those who don’t attend the social functions probably retain membership as some sort of ego boost, she says. Those who are active have much to choose from. The group’s monthly newsletter, San Diego Mensan, lists a full calendar of events and a variety of special interest groups — SIGs, according to Mensans, who have a weakness for anagrams.

The snooker SIG meets regularly for intelligent pool and billiards at the Billiard Tavern in downtown San Diego. A newly created gourmet dining SIG shows promise as the cerebral answer to “Let’s Dine Out.” Gay Mensans rally under the G.I.S.T. SIG — Gays in Support Together, anagrammatically speaking. A “call to arms” in the April newsletter proclaims the creation of the APES SIG, the Anti-aPathy Energies Society. It’s a seeming departure from the “Mensa has no opinion” credo. Member Kent C.K. Gordon uses a full page to goad members to join him in a Spartan crusade to battle “status quo stances.” It sounds like an attempt to affix a spigot to the untapped resources of Mensa.

The APES SIG, or any other SIG, can take any stance it wishes and still not breach the Mensan vow of political celibacy because SIGs don’t speak for Mensa, Jones says. Perhaps the organization is so split that no group could speak for it.

Is the organization social or intellectual? “San Diego Mensa used to have a reputation as a bunch of eggheads,” says Best. “We were attracting some people for the wrong reasons and keeping others out. Now we’re getting too much publicity on the frivolous activities. I think we need to swing back to a middle ground.” Too much frivolity lost the club at least one prospective member. A person in the San Diego broadcast industry qualified for Mensa but declined to join after attending several activities. “I went to luncheons regularly for about three months,” he says. “I wanted to meet people of my own intelligence level. But they were talking about recipes for beef stroganoff. I wanted to talk about the meaning of the universe. They just talked about mundane things in an intelligent manner.”

Then there are the mental “meet market” aspects of the club. Many Mensans are single, a point club literature stresses. “Fifty percent of our members are currently unmarried,” one brochure states. It’s a recruiting point some members have been reluctant to employ. “One former president wanted to change the brochure to read that fifty percent are married,” says Best. Still, it’s a selling angle frequently used. “There are enough persons in any age group so that anyone needing a mate should feel he can do well,” Best says. And Mensa matches guarantee that, though a person may not be precisely your intellectual equal, his or her brain will at least be in the same ballpark.

Mensa literature further hints that the club may have an important role to play in the world. “In a world which must increasingly make use of intelligent people, we feel our potential is very great,” reads a brochure. But Mensa also chooses to limit that potential. “Mensa’s political, religious, and ideological aims? Mensa has none,” reads the same brochure. “We may be able to come up with solutions to the world’s problems, but we don't have the political power to implement anything,” says Best. “Besides, any stand we took would alienate a lot of members.”

But even without uniting behind a cause, Mensa has the power to alienate people, to provoke the kind of scorn and suspicion that Mensans often suffered as children. One such incident occurred at Ten Downing North, a small restaurant and lounge tucked away in a shopping plaza off Highway 101 in Solana Beach, where groups of Mensans have been meeting for the past year and a half for “intelligent happy hours.” The restaurant is an appropriate meeting spot, with a canopied entrance and an English motif highlighted by silhouettes of Winston Churchill, whose mother country spawned Mensa.

It’s about 6:00 p.m., one hour into a happy hour scheduled to last until nine, though Jane Downing, function organizer, says Mensan gatherings have been known to “close the place up. ” Mensans meet in a railed-in area several feet above the main lounge, where about a dozen are seated around tables. An additional member arrives every few minutes. Two couples in their late twenties are playing darts in one comer of the elevated area. In response to an inquiry, one man, who is wearing a blue work shirt and has black, Afro-style hair, replies, “We’re not in Mensa.” Minutes later the four are asked to leave to make room for arriving Mensans. As they walk off, the work-shirted man cups his hand over a visitor’s ear and utters in a hoarse whisper, “Mensa sucks.”

The words, said in an ugly tone, may simply have reflected anger at being asked to leave the area, perhaps said with no knowledge of what Mensa actually is. But a University of California geophysics professor, who was among Mensans this night, said harsh reactions to the group are not uncommon. “Any group that decides that it’s better than the rest of the world is going to get back in spades that it’s better than you.” The professor, though he frequents the happy hours, is not a member of Mensa, “although I suspect I could be one very easily. ” He asks that his name not be used in an article because the frivolity of the happy hour would conflict with the seriousness of his job. But he is expansive on his reasons for attending the functions, which are among the small percentage of San Diego Mensa events listed as open to nonmembers. “Why do I come here?” he asks. ‘ ‘I come here because I enjoy playing games, and I enjoy playing games with people. The people here play games on a level most don’t. One of the games I see is called ‘Let’s see how intelligent you are,’ or maybe it’s called, ‘My IQ is better than your IQ.’ Another game is, ‘See, we’re more intelligent than those slobs out there. ’ What I like is that I get to play the games and I get to play with people who can show off my bad moves. ” While most Mensans deny that they have a condescending attitude toward persons not in the club, the intellectual combat is an admitted factor. “There’s often some sparring at first,” says Best, “but it’s usually not carried too far. It’s dangerous to bluff in Mensa; too many people will call you.”

About eighteen Mensans are now at the happy hour and the level of conversation has risen to a loud drone. The Mensans range in age from twenties to forties, in dress from casual to elegant, and in appearance from attractive to plain. From a distance the scene is not unlike any of scores of happy hours now going on elsewhere in the county. What distinguishes the group, perhaps, is the steady stream of conversation. At other happy hours juke boxes or bar bands may be needed to fill the lulls. Here, Mensans' minds provide the music. Tonight's bill of fare includes talk about the psychic abilities of some club members — perhaps evidence of additional power that comes with high intelligence, perhaps the Mensa version of what’s-your-horoscope bar banter.

One Mensan talks about a rich husband and life she left behind. “I left Rancho Santa Fe, big cars, everything fantastic. Now I’m selling real estate and working on my Ph.D. in human development. I had a lot of money once and I'm going to have it again.” Her name is Ginny and she has classic Mediterranean features, sculptor-cut hair, and is wearing a flowered dress. Ginny taught gifted children and has mothered two herself. Her conversation turns toward teachers who aren’t sensitive to the needs of children, especially gifted ones. “When my daughter was in the second grade, she drew a picture with a black sky. She said she’d drawn it that way because it was a stormy day. The teacher made her take it back and paint the sky blue. Now that’s, I won’t say it, it’s a four-letter word. I think it’s the biggest farce in the world how they educate kids. ”

At the other end of the table, Larry, frocked in a rumpled long-sleeve white shirt, looks as though he just rolled out of a corporate think tank. That’s not far from the truth. He slurps a cold glass of beer and apologizes for being more verbally footloose than usual tonight. He explains he just finished a technical paper that required two straight weeks of twenty-four-hour-a-day mathematical thought. He’s a technical writer, he explains, with a heavy science and math background. Quantum mechanics is one of his favorite subjects. “You're probably going to think this is strange, but I once wrote a humorous column on quantum mechanics for a newspaper. It was called Beyond the Scope and it appeared in the Katona Village Herald, a little newspaper in Katona, New York.” An example of quantum mechanics humor? Larry’s sample was beyond the reach of someone of less than Mensan stuff. It was something about the phenomenon of force that holds an electron in orbit around an atomic nucleus. A common method of illustrating this phenomenon is to imagine a golf ball glued to a sidewalk and someone taking a swing at it with a golf club. “And of course you’re going to want to use an old set of clubs,” he said. What was the punch line? “Well, that’s it. There wasn’t that much to it, really. I have no evidence whatever that anyone ever read it.”

One Mensan, a consulting engineer with an international clientele, who is also a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, once was asked to write an article for the Mensan on the difference between the intelligent and the nonintelligent alcoholic. He refused. “There is no difference,” he says. “When you’re an alcoholic your brain turns to mush. There have been times when I’ve been so drunk that I’ve been unable to zip my fly — and that doesn't take much intelligence.”

It’s now nearly 9:00 p.m. and many of the dozen or so Mensans remaining at Ten Downing have been there since five. While no brains have turned to mush, the accumulated effect of beer, wine, and a smattering of cocktails has softened a few. The U.C. professor is talking with Francie, an attractive middle-aged blond who drives to Solana Beach from Orange County just for the happy hour. Los Angeles-area Mensans, she says, are too stuffy. “All they care about is comparing IQs.” The conversation between the professor and Francie is less abstract than were some earlier in the evening, and it’s devoid of the intellectual one-upmanship the professor is fond of. “One thing I dislike about women's liberation,” says Francie, “is that they object to calling women girls. I think all women are girls at heart. ”

A woman who let her membership lapse after a year in Mensa said she left it still not able to define the group; the members and activities were too diverse to categorize. Indeed, a discussion group that met at a Mensan’s home two days after the happy hour at Ten Downing had an entirely different tone.

Reid, one of the happy hour patrons, now sits in the study of San Diego Mensa president Barbara Jones’s Del Cerro home. He stuffs dollar donations into a glass jar and writes name tags as members of the Bronowski SIG file in. The group has gathered tonight to watch Jacob Bronowski narrate “World Within World,” an episode in the Ascent of Man public television series. About two dozen Mensans, a mixed bag, but like the happy hour, mostly Caucasian adults, sample Jones’s chicken enchiladas, refried beans, and barbecued tortilla chips, amid buzzings of living-room conversation. It is not unlike a large family gathering. Aunts, uncles, and grandmas sip red punch or wine from plastic cups and slice food on wobbly paper plates.

“We’re all basically lazy,” says Bill between bites before the show. He looks as though he could fill in for Carroll O’Connor on All in the Family in a pinch — in his forties, ample stomach, a husky, construction-worker look. But the conversation doesn’t fit the Archie Bunker image. “You won’t find many rich Mensans,” he says in a gruff but friendly tone. “We don’t like to work. We think of ways of getting out of it. We have too many other interests. Intelligent people have a wide range of interests and a desire to pursue each of them. You can’t do that . . . you can’t be the Renaissance man if you have to work all day.”

Bill says he beat the work rap by making some successful investments that now support him, and he adds that it’s a dream of many members. Financial success isn't an end-all for Mensans, but, true to most attempts to categorize, that doesn’t apply to all. “Oh, there are those who have become very successful financially,” Jones corrects as she hauls another tray of enchiladas out of the oven and onto the serving table.

The clock ticks past seven and the Ascent of Man orchestral theme trumpets in the next room. Bronowski’s talking head appears on the living room color console. Stragglers heap last-minute helpings onto their plates and scrunch into the remaining empty spaces on the living room carpet. While much of the nation is tuned to Sixty Minutes or The Wonderful World of Disney, this small handful of the very bright are viewing an hour-long crash course in the development of atomic theory. At eight o’clock someone switches off the tube and the aunts, uncles, and grandmas launch into a discussion. It’s a considerably more sober affair than that which transpired two days before at Ten Downing. Early in the discussion someone picks up on one of Brondwski’s narrative digressions and theorizes that, based on one author’s theory of astrological origins, Venus broke off from Saturn and knocked Earth into an orbit more conducive to the development of life. The time at which this was supposed to have happened supposedly coincides with a respected Roman Catholic bishop’s estimate of the exact moment the world was created. Bronowski drew a chuckle out of his captive Mensan audience earlier when he said he had thankfully forgotten the exact minute, day and month in 4004 B.C. when God is thought to have created His universe.

Conversation rambles for two hours and breaks up around ten o’clock with only a core group of five or six hanging on until the very end. Each had a share in the lofty talk that touched down on a range of subjects, among them the plate tectonics theory of volcanism and continental drift, the mysteries of Stonehenge and the pyramids, even population and transportation history of San Diego County. The Mensans giveth and taketh away credence from such myths as the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis. A room full of Aunt Marthas and Uncle Bills exude tolerance and enthusiasm throughout the evening and at least sound as though they really know what they’re talking about. It is far removed from chitchat about Gaylord Perry’s pitching arm or gramma’s latest quilt project or that jerk at the factory.

It’s late morning in East County and the sun is already beginning to scorch as it beats down on the brown stucco exterior of the State Mutual Savings & Loan Association office on Avocado Boulevard in El Cajon. Inside, in the business’s community meeting room, sixteen people, many of them recruited at an open house here the previous week, are waiting to take two tests that may gain them admittance to Mensa. The group is a varied one: a teenager, a man in his early twenties who wears a baseball cap and “Morris the Cat” T-shirt, several middle-aged people, a woman in her sixties. Their reasons for seeking entrance to Mensa are varied. The teenager, a junior at a local high school, thinks Mensa membership might help him gain admittance to college; he’d decided to take the test even though a Mensan had told him that membership often does more harm than good outside club ranks. A twenty-one-year-old woman who is a student and sells air purifiers part time is taking the test because she’s always wanted to know what her IQ is. And there’s Dan, a forty-nine-year-old former computer programmer who has been working as a courier for a North County bank following a career crisis and an extended bout with depression. Dan says the courier work has been a welcome relief, entailing a lot of time on the road, where “the drive is relaxing.” But he’s also missed some of the mental stimulation he encountered in the computer field. “You don’t get a chance to talk with people, to exchange ideas. If you have a brain at all, everyone needs a chance to express themselves. I would think in Mensa you would meet a great deal of opinionated people. I'm tired of all the wishy-washies, if you will. ”

Standing between Dan, the others, and Mensa membership, are two tests, the Cattell intelligence test and the California Short-form Test of Mental Maturity. The Cattell leans heavily toward verbal problems, mind-twisters, more complicated versions of problems such as: “Barbara’s brother Matthew has one more brother than he has sisters. How many more brothers than sisters does Barbara have?” The California Test of Mental Maturity relies more on standard verbal and mathematical skills, the type tested on Scholastic Aptitude Tests. A score indicating a 136 IQ on either will open Mensa doors.

The sixteen would-be Mensans are seated in folding chairs around card tables as Lendon Best, official county test proctor, begins preparing them for the day’s exams, which will take about three hours. Best is an ideal proctor. His manner is easy and tends to relax an audience; and, with a high forehead accentuated by a receding hairline and glasses, he looks intelligent, like a man who is master of the tests he is administering. Best, wearing a mustard-colored T-shirt imprinted with “Fun in the MenSun, ” begins by giving those about to be tested a bit of additional incentive to enter the San Diego chapter. “I’ve just received notice this morning that we’re now the sixth largest chapter in the country; we just overtook Philadelphia. Some people say it’s easy to overtake Philadelphia, but it took us a long time.”

The remark brings laughter from the group, but smiles are replaced by looks of concentration — and sometimes strain — as the testing begins and progresses. Few people without high IQs even bother to take Mensa qualifying exams. About two-thirds who take the tests qualify, but some pass more easily than others, much as natural athletes find certain physical tasks easy while others must condition themselves long and hard to accomplish them. That there is an IQ difference among those taking the tests becomes apparent as the Cattell progresses. The first few sections are almost like mental sprints, and the field seems closely grouped when Best calls “time" at the end of each section. But like runners in a marathon, the field of would-be Mensans spreads out as section is followed by more difficult section. Mental exhaustion sets in — "the wall,” in marathon lingo — among some who are working feverishly, half-way through a portion of the test that a tablemate has already completed.

At the conclusion of the test, Best is comforting. The exams are shipped to New York to be graded, he says. "We'll never know your scores in San Diego. We'll just know whether you've been offered membership." And there is some consolation for those who do not receive an invitation to join. Although Mensa will not test a person a second time, it is possible to be tested again elsewhere and submit those scores for Mensa membership. Sometimes, Best says, a person need only have a particularly good day to correctly answer those few additional questions that can make the difference between a 135 and a 136 IQ. With those comforting words, the would-be Mensans begin filing out into the East County sun and the white-haired woman in her sixties turns to a group of test mates and says, "It's been nice meeting you all. Maybe we'll see you again and maybe we won’t."

A footnote: One of the two writers who wrote this article took the Mensa exams as part of the research for the story and has since learned that he qualified for membership. He’s not sure if he will join, but commented, "It’s always nice to learn you’re more than just another pretty face."