marilyn vos savant (; born 1946) is an american magazine columnist, author, lecturer, and playwright. she was listed as having the highest recorded intelligence quotient (iq) in the "guinness book of records", a competitive category the publication has since retired. since 1986, she has written "ask marilyn", a "parade" magazine sunday column where she solves puzzles and answers questions on various subjects. among them was a discussion of the monty hall problem, to which she postulated an answer in 1990.