Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Gift-Giving Edition
NEWS | 20 November 2025
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. So what of those fun, itty bits of info that are correct? In the 1990s, William Safire suggested factlet for the small-but-true fact (and The Atlantic in 2012 agreed), though minifact is sometimes used. And for the statements somewhere in between interesting and untrue—factini, perhaps? Start with five parts fascinating to one part wrong; adjust to taste. Find last week’s questions here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily. Wednesday, November 19, 2025 Today’s questions all come from The Atlantic’s 2025 gift guide. According to Jane Austen, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of” what? — From Dan Fallon’s entry, “Colorful Storage” From its beginnings to the 1950s, moviemaking was much riskier than it is today, thanks to what quality of nitrate-based film? — From Kaitlyn Tiffany’s entry “The World’s Most Dangerous Film Festival” A guitar pedal’s volume knob controls the ultimate loudness of the output. What other knob controls the strength of the signal as it enters the device? — From Evan McMurry’s entry “DIY Guitar Pedal” The name of what Romantic English poet is now used in adjective form to describe any brooding, enigmatic type? — From Walt Hunter’s entry, “The Perfect Black T-Shirt” In the musical Cabaret, a character is given as a gift what fruit, which she assumes arrived from Hawaii (but actually came from California)? — From my own entry “[REDACTED] Perfection” And by the way, did you know that in some cultures, giving a loved one a gift of scissors or a knife is inauspicious, as it risks severing the relationship? I recently ran afoul of this when I sent kitchen shears to a friend raised in an Indian family; bless her for rectifying the situation by wiring me a dollar and thus turning the transaction into a purchase. So if anyone buys the nail clippers that senior editor Alan Taylor recommends and suffers a schism with the recipient, let me know—we’ll add them to the bad-luck list. Happy shopping! Answers: A wife. Likewise, Dan writes, “anyone in possession of too many things must be in want of a storage solution.” His favorite option is eye-catching enough to double as decor. Shop here. Flammability. Kaitlyn is a fan of the annual film festival in Rochester, New York, that flirts with disaster by screening nitrate reels. Haven’t you always thought that the frisson of mortal peril is what Meet Me in St. Louis is missing? Shop here. Gain. Building your own guitar pedal is more fun and much more affordable than buying a nice one, writes Evan (who advises that the sweet spot for his selection’s gain knob is at about 1 o’clock). Shop here. Lord Byron. A black T-shirt from the no-frills Japanese retailer Muji is possibly the world’s quickest shortcut to a Byronic air, Walt writes, even when you’re very un-Byronically slumped on a bench wolfing a taco. Shop here. A pineapple. You, however, can send a friend a slice of actual aloha—as I have done many, many times—thanks to a farm that delivers its homegrown jewels from Maui to the rest of the States. Shop here. 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 top-notch fact—send it my way at [email protected]. Tuesday, November 18, 2025 From the edition of The Atlantic Daily by Isabel Fattal: The manufacturer Abbott once produced about 40 percent of the U.S. supply of a particular product. A 2022 recall by Abbott therefore contributed to nationwide shortages. What is the product? — From Nicholas Florko’s “America Has a [REDACTED] Problem—Again” A U.S. trial jury is smaller than a grand jury—hence its also being known by what name containing French’s opposite of grand? — From Quinta Jurecic’s “The Trump Administration’s Favorite Tool for Criminalizing Dissent” What is the term for a paradoxical anecdote or riddle used by practitioners of Zen Buddhism to deepen their meditation? — From Julie Beck’s “How to Cheat at Conversation” And by the way, did you know that fewer humans have visited the bottom of the ocean than have gone to space? Depending on how you count, somewhere between 600 and 800 have slipped the surly bonds of Earth; only a few dozen have pulled those bonds as tight as they’ll go by putting seven miles of Pacific Ocean over their head at the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep. Then there is Kathy Sullivan. She has been to both. Her trench trip was in 2020, and in 1984, she was the first woman to complete a spacewalk. She is now, rather charmingly, referred to as the world’s “most vertical” person. Answers: Baby formula. The supply-chain disaster prompted regulators to explore ways to make the vulnerable industry a little less so, but Nicholas writes that a new recall from a different manufacturer is a reminder of how easily formula making can crack. Read more. Petit jury. Quinta reports that neither the grand juries empowered to indict nor the petit juries empowered to convict have been particularly convinced by the Trump administration’s cases against the people it alleges are “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” federal officials. Read more. Koan. “How do you cheat at a conversation?” sounds as though it could be one, Julie muses, but it is in fact the value proposition of a new artificial-intelligence tool. Cluely promises to give users any answer they might need in a social interaction, but Julie says it only makes them worse. Read more. Monday, November 17, 2025 From the edition of The Atlantic Daily by David A. Graham: U.S. pennies are plated in copper but principally made of what other metal at the end of the alphabet? — From Caity Weaver’s “Pennies Are Trash Now” What beverage is traditionally made of ground tencha leaves, prepared with a whisk, and drunk from a ceramic bowl called a cha-wan? — From Ellen Cushing’s “The [REDACTED] Problem” Broken chains and shackles were originally intended to be held in the left hand of what American landmark before a new design replaced those items with a tablet? — From Clint Smith’s “Tell Students the Truth About American History” And by the way, did you know that for more than six decades the United States produced half-cent pieces? They were 100 percent copper and stamped with Lady Liberty, who sported a variety of hairdos over the years. The coin was almost the size of a modern quarter, which seems big until you consider that at the end of its run, the half-cent had a purchasing power of about 17 cents in today’s money. Still, in 1857 it was deemed insufficiently valuable to keep minting—at 17 contemporary cents! Considering that the government is once again in the coin-discontinuing mood, the nickel and dime might want to watch out, too. Answers:
Author: Drew Goins.
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