Up to date with new questions at 4:20 p.m. ET on October 23, 2025.
Within the Fifties, the TV quiz present Twenty-One stumbled upon a viewership-boosting technique that for a short time frame could be all the craze: dishonest. This system fastened winners and losers, coached contestants, and customarily dabbled in malfeasance. Different exhibits adopted swimsuit, scandal ensued, and Congress—Congress!—acquired concerned.
I’m relieved to say that this quiz operates past the revisions to the Communications Act of 1934, so I’ll fortunately offer you all of the solutions: They’re proper there in The Atlantic.
Discover final week’s questions right here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox on daily basis, join The Atlantic Every day.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
- Within the first quantity of Philip Pullman’s His Darkish Supplies trilogy, the protagonist is ready to learn an “alethiometer”—a magical machine that, per the e book’s title, is a kind of what extra frequent device?
— From Lev Grossman’s “Philip Pullman’s Anti-Escapist Fantasy” - What disparaging (and rhyming) nickname for televisions that first appeared within the Fifties combines a dated slang phrase for “idiot” with a phrase for one in every of early TVs’ technical components?
— From Ian Bogost’s “You’re Getting ‘Display screen Time’ Incorrect” - To show to his spouse, Penelope, after years of journey that he was the person he had as soon as been, what hero of Greek fantasy had to make use of his previous bow to shoot an arrow via a dozen perforated axe heads?
— From Nicholas Thompson’s “Why I Run”
And by the way in which, do you know that there’s a volcano whose caldera perennially bubbles with lava and whose vent spews gold into the air? It exists not in Pullman’s fantasy world, however someplace probably even wilder: Antarctica.
Mount Erebus has been lava-filled since not less than 1972, and every day it blows out about 80 grams of gold flecks, price 1000’s of {dollars}. Good work if you may get it—simply don’t overlook your mittens.
See you tomorrow!
Solutions:
- Compass. With the ultimate e book of Pullman’s follow-up trilogy out as we speak—three many years after The Golden Compass was first printed—Grossman opinions the brand new e book and appears again on the universe Pullman constructed. It’s a handbook not for escaping to a different world, he writes, however studying to like this one. Learn extra.
- Boob tube. We’ve been fretting about “display screen time” for many years, Bogost says, however now it’s now not a discrete chunk to attenuate; it’s the truth we stay in. It’s all the time already display screen time. Learn extra.
- Odysseus. What archery did for the person of many gadgets, operating did for Nicholas, he writes in an excerpt from his memoir. After a bout with most cancers, he wanted a marathon to show himself to himself, and it’s nonetheless what’s protecting his life on monitor. Learn extra.
How did you do? Come again tomorrow for extra questions, scroll down for extra, or click on right here for final week’s. And should you suppose up an awesome query after studying an Atlantic story—or just need to share a scintillating truth—ship it my method at [email protected].
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
From the version of The Atlantic Every day by David A. Graham:
- In line with the army adage, there aren’t any atheists in what defensive preventing place?
— From Missy Ryan’s “Holy Warrior” - What federal company that lately supplied a $50,000 bonus to new recruits is, alas, struggling to get these recruits to cross a 1.5-mile-run requirement?
— From Nick Miroff’s “[REDACTED]’s ‘Athletically Allergic’ Recruits” - Florida’s Brightline is barely the second high-speed practice in the USA—the primary being the Amtrak-operated line within the Northeast Hall identified by what identify?
— From Kaitlyn Tiffany’s “A ‘Dying Practice’ Is Haunting South Florida”
And by the way in which, do you know that in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, it isn’t the face-clutching determine who’s hollering, however fairly the entire remainder of the world round him? The person is making an attempt to cowl his ears to block out that common yell—what Munch known as in a single inscription “the good scream all through nature.” Subsequent up for reappraisal: 😱
Solutions:
- Foxholes. For all of the supplication down within the trenches, Missy writes, hardly ever have commanders dictated non secular phrases to their troops; Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth—and the rising Christian-nationalist church from which he seems to have gotten lots of his concepts—are altering that. Learn extra.
- ICE. Nick reviews on how push-ups, sit-ups, and that run (which should be accomplished sub–14 minutes) are standing between Donald Trump and his deportation objectives. Greater than a 3rd of the brand new recruits have failed the company’s physical-fitness check, in line with officers. Learn extra.
- Acela. The Acela and the Brightline are completely different for lots of causes, together with the Florida practice’s gloss and surpassing consolation, however probably the most essential distinction, Kaitlyn reviews, is that the Brightline retains hitting folks. Learn extra.
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
From the version of The Atlantic Every day by Will Gottsegen:
- Rudy Giuliani’s son and Osama bin Laden’s niece have been among the many visitor hosts of the podcast Warfare Room whereas what everlasting host served 4 months in jail for refusing to cooperate with the congressional investigation into January 6?
— From Jonathan D. Karl’s “[REDACTED] and the Murderers and Hitmen Who Grew to become His ‘Besties’” - What barnyard time period is used to explain the simply generated and artistically worthless AI content material that litters the web?
— From Charlie Warzel’s “A Instrument That Crushes Creativity” - What’s the identify of the nationwide legislature that accommodates events together with Likud, Blue and White, and Yesh Atid?
— From Yair Rosenberg’s “Can Trump Comprise [REDACTED]’s Onerous Proper?”
And by the way in which, do you know that it’s been effectively over a century since one pig did, in reality, fly? And for 3 and a half miles, at that? Granted, this was a ride-along within the airplane of Lord John Moore-Brabazon of Kent, a peer and aviation pioneer, however contemplating that the flight occurred in November 1909, it’s nonetheless no small feat. (The pig was known as Icarus II, and he fared fairly higher than his eponym.)
Solutions:
- Steve Bannon. Karl seems into Bannon’s time in jail final 12 months—what he discovered there, whom he befriended, how he managed to wield his affect over MAGA world even from behind bars. Learn extra.
- Slop. What with Donald Trump’s fondness for spammy AI movies and the proliferation of social networks devoted to soullessly generated content material, we’re residing in “the golden age of slop,” Charlie contends. “There is no such thing as a realm of life that’s unsloppable.” Learn extra.
- The Knesset. Final week, Israel’s Parliament hosted Trump for a speech celebrating the cease-fire within the conflict in Gaza, however, Yair writes, members of the legislature’s far proper really feel jilted. Trump, he says, should restrain them if he’s to convey peace to the area. Learn extra.
Monday, October 20, 2025
From the version of The Atlantic Every day by David A. Graham:
- What retailer lately introduced that it’ll carry the weight-loss drug Ozempic at a reduced value of $499 a month—that means you may get your GLP-1, a scorching canine, and a fountain drink for $500.50?
— From Emily Oster’s “Ozempic for All” - The cultural theorist Dominic Pettman defines what modern-relationship time period as “abandonment with a up to date garnish” (including, “Once we got here up with texting, we additionally got here up with not texting”)?
— From Anna Holmes’s “The Nice [REDACTED] Paradox” - In the way in which that runners have Strava, birders have eBird, and readers have Goodreads, what hobbyists are most definitely to make use of the app Ravelry?
— From Tyler Austin Harper’s “The Sudden Profundity of a Film About Chook-Watching”
And by the way in which, do you know—talking of hobbies—that when he wasn’t writing contributions to the Western canon, the novelist Vladimir Nabokov saved himself busy observing and even discovering new species of butterflies? His lepidoptery fieldwork impelled full-time scientists to rethink the classification of a whole genus.
That he additionally composed chess issues is thus hardly shocking. However earlier than you go beating your self up, take into account what he didn’t do a lot of: sleep.
Solutions:
- Costco. It’s an indication that costs for these “near-miracle medication” are falling and can hold falling, Oster writes—undercutting the argument that they’re too pricey to supply by way of Medicaid. Rising the medication’ accessibility via Medicaid, she says, would save lives. Learn extra.
- Ghosting. Holmes writes that Pettman’s new e book would possibly supply a much less upsetting method to consider the sudden cutoff of communication, although it would require rising a thicker pores and skin. Learn extra.
- Knitters. All of those hobby-specific apps should some extent been gamified, with progress bars, unlockable achievements, or different metrics that Tyler worries are sucking the enjoyment out of the hobbies themselves. Learn extra.
