Drew Goins

Updated with new questions at 4 p.m. ET on December 3, 2025.
I have much extolled here the value of new knowledge. Let us now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared up enough for him to pull together a speech advising that the good people of the college learn less.
“I found the astronomer of the university gadding around after comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote.

Updated with new questions at 5:15 p.m. ET on December 2, 2025.
I have much extolled here the value of new knowledge. Let us now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared up enough for him to pull together a speech advising that the good people of the college learn less.
“I found the astronomer of the university gadding around after comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote.

I have much extolled here the value of new knowledge. Let us now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared up enough for him to pull together a speech advising that the good people of the college learn less.
“I found the astronomer of the university gadding around after comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote.

Updated with new questions at 2:45 p.m. ET on November 25, 2025.
A seminal mid-century paper by the psychologist George Miller asserted that the human brain can hold seven items in short-term memory, give or take a couple. A person can chunk—that is, group items together in sensible, memorable units—to get a bit more bang, but modern psychologists think the species can handle only about four of those.

A seminal mid-century paper by the psychologist George Miller asserted that the human brain can hold seven items in short-term memory, give or take a couple. A person can chunk—that is, group items together in sensible, memorable units—to get a bit more bang, but modern psychologists think the species can handle only about four of those.

Updated with new questions at 4:25 p.m. ET on November 21, 2025.
If I have provided you with any factoids in the course of Atlantic Trivia, I apologize, because a factoid, properly, is not a small, interesting fact. A factoid is a piece of information that looks like a fact but is untrue. Norman Mailer popularized the term in 1973, very intentionally giving it the suffix -oid. Is a humanoid not a creature whose appearance suggests humanity but whose nature belies it? Thus is it with factoid.

Updated with new questions at 3 p.m. ET on November 19, 2025.
If I have provided you with any factoids in the course of Atlantic Trivia, I apologize, because a factoid, properly, is not a small, interesting fact. A factoid is a piece of information that looks like a fact but is untrue. Norman Mailer popularized the term in 1973, very intentionally giving it the suffix -oid. Is a humanoid not a creature whose appearance suggests humanity but whose nature belies it? Thus is it with factoid.

Updated with new questions at 4:50 p.m. ET on November 18, 2025.
If I have provided you with any factoids in the course of Atlantic Trivia, I apologize, because a factoid, properly, is not a small, interesting fact. A factoid is a piece of information that looks like a fact but is untrue. Norman Mailer popularized the term in 1973, very intentionally giving it the suffix -oid. Is a humanoid not a creature whose appearance suggests humanity but whose nature belies it? Thus is it with factoid.

If I have provided you with any factoids in the course of Atlantic Trivia, I apologize, because a factoid, properly, is not a small, interesting fact. A factoid is a piece of information that looks like a fact but is untrue. Norman Mailer popularized the term in 1973, very intentionally giving it the suffix -oid. Is a humanoid not a creature whose appearance suggests humanity but whose nature belies it? Thus is it with factoid.

Updated with new questions at 4:05 p.m. ET on November 12, 2025.
The famed 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson was a lover of learning. As the dictionary maker once wrote, he dedicated his life “wholly to curiosity,” with the intent “to wander over the boundless regions of general knowledge.” (He was additionally a lover of getting bored and moving on, writing of how he “quitted every science at the first perception of disgust.” Respect.

Updated with new questions at 3:40 p.m. ET on November 11, 2025.
The famed 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson was a lover of learning. As the dictionary maker once wrote, he dedicated his life “wholly to curiosity,” with the intent “to wander over the boundless regions of general knowledge.” (He was additionally a lover of getting bored and moving on, writing of how he “quitted every science at the first perception of disgust.” Respect.

The famed 19th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson was a lover of learning. As the dictionary maker once wrote, he dedicated his life “wholly to curiosity,” with the intent “to wander over the boundless regions of general knowledge.” (He was additionally a lover of getting bored and moving on, writing of how he “quitted every science at the first perception of disgust.” Respect.

Updated with new questions at 4:15 p.m. ET on November 7, 2025.
The 37-volume Naturalis Historia, written by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, is the world’s earliest surviving encyclopedia. In the first century C.E., Pliny set out to collect the breadth of human knowledge, and millennia later, it’s still a great document for learning a little bit about everything. It has chapters on sugar, Germany, the rainbow, Cesarean births, the art of painting, and hypothetical antipodes.

Updated with new questions at 4:40 p.m. ET on November 4, 2025.
The 37-volume Naturalis Historia, written by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, is the world’s earliest surviving encyclopedia. In the first century C.E., Pliny set out to collect the breadth of human knowledge, and millennia later, it’s still a great document for learning a little bit about everything. It has chapters on sugar, Germany, the rainbow, Cesarean births, the art of painting, and hypothetical antipodes.

The 37-volume Naturalis Historia, written by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, is the world’s earliest surviving encyclopedia. In the first century C.E., Pliny set out to collect the breadth of human knowledge, and millennia later, it’s still a great document for learning a little bit about everything. It has chapters on sugar, Germany, the rainbow, Cesarean births, the art of painting, and hypothetical antipodes.

Updated with new questions at 3:50 p.m. ET on October 31, 2025.
It’s said that the 17th- and 18th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the last person to know everything. He was a whiz at philosophy, law, logic, science, engineering, politics—the works. But there was also simply less to know back then; the post–Industrial Revolution knowledge explosion killed the universal genius.
Which is to say that I bet Leibniz wouldn’t know the full oeuvre of K-pop if he were alive today.

Updated with new questions at 4:45 p.m. ET on October 30, 2025.
It’s said that the 17th- and 18th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the last person to know everything. He was a whiz at philosophy, law, logic, science, engineering, politics—the works. But there was also simply less to know back then; the post–Industrial Revolution knowledge explosion killed the universal genius.
Which is to say that I bet Leibniz wouldn’t know the full oeuvre of K-pop if he were alive today.

Updated with new questions at 6:10 p.m. ET on October 29, 2025.
It’s said that the 17th- and 18th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the last person to know everything. He was a whiz at philosophy, law, logic, science, engineering, politics—the works. But there was also simply less to know back then; the post–Industrial Revolution knowledge explosion killed the universal genius.
Which is to say that I bet Leibniz wouldn’t know the full oeuvre of K-pop if he were alive today.

Updated with new questions at 4:35 p.m. ET on October 28, 2025.
It’s said that the 17th- and 18th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the last person to know everything. He was a whiz at philosophy, law, logic, science, engineering, politics—the works. But there was also simply less to know back then; the post–Industrial Revolution knowledge explosion killed the universal genius.
Which is to say that I bet Leibniz wouldn’t know the full oeuvre of K-pop if he were alive today.

It’s said that the 17th- and 18th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the last person to know everything. He was a whiz at philosophy, law, logic, science, engineering, politics—the works. But there was also simply less to know back then; the post–Industrial Revolution knowledge explosion killed the universal genius.
Which is to say that I bet Leibniz wouldn’t know the full oeuvre of K-pop if he were alive today.

Updated with new questions at 4:20 p.m. ET on October 23, 2025.
In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.

Updated with new questions at 5:10 p.m. ET on October 22, 2025.
In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.

Updated with new questions at 3:45 p.m. ET on October 21, 2025.
In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.

In the 1950s, the TV quiz show Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting strategy that for a brief period of time would be all the rage: cheating. The program fixed winners and losers, coached contestants, and generally dabbled in malfeasance. Other shows followed suit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—got involved.

Updated with new questions at 4:05 p.m. ET on October 17, 2025.
Atlantic Trivia reaches Week 3, which is by definition the most trivial of all: The word trivia originally referred to places where three (tri-) roads (-via) met in a crossing. If those slouch Romans had been more industrious builders, we might be playing quintivia or even septivia today.

Updated with new questions at 2:40 p.m. ET on October 16, 2025.
Atlantic Trivia reaches Week 3, which is by definition the most trivial of all: The word trivia originally referred to places where three (tri-) roads (-via) met in a crossing. If those slouch Romans had been more industrious builders, we might be playing quintivia or even septivia today.

Updated with new questions at 3:55 p.m. ET on October 15, 2025.
Atlantic Trivia reaches Week 3, which is by definition the most trivial of all: The word trivia originally referred to places where three (tri-) roads (-via) met in a crossing. If those slouch Romans had been more industrious builders, we might be playing quintivia or even septivia today.

Atlantic Trivia reaches Week 3, which is by definition the most trivial of all: The word trivia originally referred to places where three (tri-) roads (-via) met in a crossing. If those slouch Romans had been more industrious builders, we might be playing quintivia or even septivia today.
That three-way intersection semantically drifted to mean “an open place,” which morphed into “public,” which turned into “commonplace”—hence, trivial. Read on for questions that are anything but.

Updated with new questions at 4:40 p.m. ET on October 10, 2025.
Welcome back for another week of The Atlantic’s un-trivial trivia, drawn from recently published stories. Without a trifle in the bunch, maybe what we’re really dealing with here is—hmm—“significa”? “Consequentia”?
Whatever butchered bit of Latin you prefer, read on for today’s questions. (Last week’s questions can be found here.)
To get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily.

Updated with new questions at 4:25 p.m. ET on October 9, 2025.
Welcome back for another week of The Atlantic’s un-trivial trivia, drawn from recently published stories. Without a trifle in the bunch, maybe what we’re really dealing with here is—hmm—“significa”? “Consequentia”?
Whatever butchered bit of Latin you prefer, read on for today’s questions. (Last week’s questions can be found here.)
To get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily.