Today’s Atlantic Trivia Questions and Answers, Week 11

Updated with new questions at 3:50 p.m. ET on December 10, 2025.

You’ve been waiting to build that dream place of yours, there in the spot you picked out a few years back, between the pons and the frontal lobe. Maybe you want to crib some designs from your friend Steve’s place; it’s got space for the first 115 digits of pi and the names of all 266 popes. But is now really the time for a new memory palace? Look at all the palaces sitting empty now, built by the folks who turned over their thinking to AI in the end.

All the more reason to start thinking and memorizing and building—your opulent mnemonic can be the pride of the neighborhood. Herewith: your first raw materials.

Find last week’s questions here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily.

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

1. What expression defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger” did the Oxford University Press choose as its 2025 word of the year?
   — From Amogh Dimri’s “[REDACTED] Is a Brilliant Word of the Year”
2. The protective coat that gradually develops on metal and prevents rusting is known by what word also used for the sheen that wooden furniture acquires over time?
   — From Tyler Austin Harper’s “The Most Impractical Tool in My Kitchen”
3. What controversial practice shunned by many in Spain over animal-cruelty concerns has been adopted as a symbol by the country’s traditionalist far right?
   — From Begoña Gómez Urzaiz’s “By the Horns”

And by the way, did you know that the word-of-the-year trend has its roots in Germany? A language society there kicked off the gimmick in 1971 with the selection of aufmüpfig, which, as I’m sure you’re aware, means “rebellious”—a reference to 1960s counterculture.

American English joined the party in 1990, when the American Dialect Society picked bushlips for “insincere political rhetoric”; see George H. W.’s “Read my lips: No new taxes.” Despite that snarky start, all of the selections that followed were sober-minded and decorous … not! (That’s 1992.)

See you tomorrow!

Answers:

1. Rage bait. The critics have come out in force, complaining that the choice is too meme-y or beneath the dignity of Oxford, but Amogh writes that the word is a great one, because—like cancel or ghosting or selfie before it—it usefully fills a niche. Read more.
2. Patina. The coating is crucial to proper carbon-steel-knife care, Tyler writes in an ode to his fussy blades. Knives of carbon steel are not nearly as low-maintenance as more accessible stainless-steel options, he says, but that’s exactly the point. Read more.
3. Bullfighting. In an essay accompanied by some stunning photos, Gómez Urzaiz follows a bullfighter who is definitionally untraditional, for one big reason: She is a woman. Read more.

How did you do? Come back tomorrow for more questions, or click here for last week’s. And if you think up a great question after reading an Atlantic story—or simply want to share a fact—send it my way at [email protected].

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

1. What 2025 sequel directed by Danny Boyle is set a little under three decades after the first film—which takes place precisely four weeks after a zombie apocalypse?
   — From David Sims’s “The 10 Best Movies of 2025”
2. A popular Filipino condiment developed amid World War II shortages replaces the tomato in ketchup with what fruit plentiful in the tropics?
   — From Yasmin Tayag’s “Can Jollibee Beat American Fast Food at Its Own Game?”
3. The writer Irving Kristol quipped that “a liberal who has been mugged by reality” is the best definition of what political label applicable to him (and to his son, Bill)?
   — From David Brooks’s “The [REDACTED] Were Right”

And by the way, did you know that the Philippines—then a U.S. territory—was also attacked in the Japanese operation that targeted Pearl Harbor? Because of the Philippines’ location across the International Date Line, the date there was December 8, 1941, rather than Hawaiʻi’s December 7. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech more accurately would have mentioned dates “which will live in infamy.”

It’s not as though FDR didn’t know this. Rather, he made the choice to decenter the Philippines in his address, worried that his stateside listeners would not think of the territory as sufficiently American. (For more of this history, I recommend Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire!)

Answers:

1. 28 Years Later. David writes that the follow-up to 2002’s 28 Days Later is proof that major studio releases can still push audiences in creative, exciting ways (and be a lot of fun too). It’s No. 6 on his Top 10 list. Read more.
2. Banana. Yasmin reports that banana ketchup crops up a lot in recipes that attempt to re-create the fast-food chain Jollibee’s punchy flavors, which in her estimation knock American fast food on its backside. That punch is at once a strength and a weakness for Jollibee in U.S. markets. Read more.
3. Neoconservative. It might behoove opponents of Donald Trump to look back to the neocons for some ideas on how to think and talk about their mission, Brooks argues. He writes that the “moral and spiritual tenor” of the original neoconservatives “could be a tonic” for a society in crisis. Read more.

Monday, December 8, 2025

1. In the late 1990s, the opening of a Guggenheim Museum outpost designed by the architect Frank Gehry reinvigorated what city in northern Spain?
   — From Carolina A. Miranda’s “Frank Gehry’s Best Work Was Not His Flashiest”
2. The American biochemist Jennifer Doudna shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the gene-editing tool known by what acronym?
   — From Nancy Walecki’s “The Rarest of All Diseases Are Becoming Treatable”
3. Football analysts coined what portmanteau combining a word for the outcome of a game with the word for an intricate Japanese art form to describe when a game ends in a tally never before recorded?
   — From Josh Levin’s “No NFL Game Has Ever Ended … 36–23”

And by the way, did you know that the highest score ever recorded in an NFL game is the Chicago Bears’ December 1940 performance over the Redskins, in which they earned 73 points? Don’t feel too bad for Washington—they also set a scoring record! However, it’s one matched many times before and since: zero points.

Remarkably, this was a championship game, the Super Bowl equivalent of the era. And the score could have been even higher; by the end of the game, officials were asking the Bears not to kick for extra points, because too many footballs had been lost to the bleachers.

Answers:

1. Bilbao. Miranda writes that if you really want to understand Gehry, who died last week at 96, you ought to look past his “titanium showpieces” to his more intimate experiments, including the very quirky house he made for himself. Read more.
2. CRISPR. Nancy reports on the ways that CRISPR has advanced since, including its first use this year to fix mutations specific to a single patient’s genes. Plans to streamline the process could attract enough investors to get similar therapies to patients en masse. Read more.
3. Scorigami. Scoring strategy makes some outcomes far likelier than others—say, 36–22, which has happened 11 times, versus the never-before-seen 36–23. Elusive Scorigamis, Levin says, are a reminder that there are yet things left undone in sports, even when it feels like we might have seen everything. Read more.