Joe and Nancy Zanca and their daughter, Ashley, 21, just got back from an annual Mensa gathering in Denver. We asked Joe Zanca of Northfield to tell us a bit about the elite club for smart folks. (For more information about Mensa, or Zanca's Mensa Boutique, contact him 630-2517 or at zanca@zancas.com.)

What exactly is Mensa? Mensa is the high-IQ society. It is a society of geniuses, and the criteria is that somebody is in the top 2 percent of intelligence in the world. The other criteria is that you have got to pay your dues.

What is your IQ? To be honest with you, I don't know. I am not only a member, but they have given me a lifetime membership. I have been a national vice president for six years, state president for four. I have been real active in the research foundation, which is the scholarship arm of Mensa. I've raised probably about $200,000 there.

What else goes on at these gatherings? Everything under the sun. We had about 40 games and puzzle tournaments, in excess of 200 presenters. This would be speakers on everything from black holes to X-rated stuff, to giftedness, to nutritional things, to people relating experiences, like one of the gals here climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

I heard that your wife, Nancy, was honored for her years of service. What has her involvement been over the years? My wife is not a member as such. She just hasn't taken the test. She has been very supportive of me in my efforts. Indeed, as a thank you to me, they had given me a distinguished service award. . . . One of the other things that they did is that they established a scholarship in my name because of all of the fundraising that I had done.

Now, what Nancy has done, over the past 20-some odd years, is she has probably attended more than 100 conventions - we call them gatherings - and has helped out all kinds of ways. She's helped out with the auctions, where we've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. She's helped out with the Mensa Boutique. She has been very active in gifted children's programs. And she was basically in charge of food for about a 1,500-person convention. She was also a pioneer in some of the things that she did concerning programs for young people at the Mensa conventions.

I heard something about a hugging effort there? What happened was somebody found out how many hugs was the record - in the Guinness Book of World Records, in an hour - and they decided we would try to beat it at the Mensa annual gathering. And my wife, my daughter and I were three of the (833) people who hugged the guy, and we indeed set a new record.

ETHAN WILENSKY-LANFORD