Updated with new questions at 9 a.m. ET on February 27, 2026.

If you put any stock in the ability of IQ tests to assess intelligence, we humans have spent the past century steadily getting smarter. (And if you don’t put any stock in them, well, we humans have steadily gotten better at IQ tests.)

Because IQ is a standardized measure, humankind’s average score still sits at 100—but this isn’t your granddaddy’s 100. IQ tests are regularly recalibrated, and over the past many decades, when new subjects have taken an old test, they have almost always outscored their predecessors’ average; Grandpa’s generation might have hovered around 100, but the kids are scoring 115 … which then becomes the new 100.

This phenomenon is called the Flynn effect, and researchers still aren’t sure what causes it. Perhaps it’s due to more efficient education or better nutrition. The reason could be that modern environments contain more interesting stimuli or that modern gasoline no longer contains lead.

I haven’t seen anyone propose that trivia is to thank, but the growing popularity of quizzing tracks with the IQ trend line pretty well too. I think I speak for all of science when I say we shouldn’t rule it out quite yet.

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

Friday, February 27, 2026

1. What famously long 1996 novel is described by Lit Hub as “shorthand for a certain kind of pretentious, performative, male-coded lit bro”?
   — From Dan Brooks’s argument that we’ve had enough of the “bro” trope
2. A recent social-media post by President Trump included the initialism UAP as well as what synonymous three-letter term that’s much more familiar in pop culture (especially science fiction)?
   — From Ross Andersen’s article about a curious big bet on the prediction market Kalshi
3. What American war correspondent established herself reporting on Spain’s civil war alongside Ernest Hemingway, whom she would later marry?
   — From Casey Schwartz’s review of books on female journalists of the 20th century

And by the way, did you know that not only is there a market on the prediction site Polymarket regarding whether Jesus will return before 2027, but also this month, a secondary market sprang up regarding whether that market’s odds would exceed 5 percent? Polymarket traders were betting on the behavior of Polymarket traders.

As you might have pieced together, a population is generally in control of its own behavior, meaning that this secondary market was eminently manipulable—a great question for regulators to puzzle over, if there happened to be any.

The secondary market closed last week. Alas, the bettors did not goose the messianic market high enough. Perhaps a failure of manipulation. Perhaps divine intervention?

Have a great weekend!

Answers:

1. Infinite Jest. Lit bro, film bro, gym bro—Brooks writes that adding bro to just about anything has become an easy “way to elevate pet peeves to trends.” Yet the laziness of the trope, he writes, robs the true hater of the pleasure of discerning why, exactly, he hates what he hates. Read more.
2. UFO. Talk of unidentified flying objects (and of unidentified aerial/anomalous phenomena) briefly stirred up early this month. Ross reports that this week, however—after talk had again died down—prediction-market traders (or possibly even one trader) plonked nearly $300,000 onto the claim that the Trump administration will confirm the existence of alien life in 2026. It’s a mystery that just might point to some inside information. Read more.
3. Martha Gellhorn. Schwartz writes that female reporters of that era were “handed nothing”; Hemingway once even sniped an accreditation that Gellhorn had sought, leaving his wife to find her own way to Europe’s theater of war. Schwartz says that these women’s necessary resourcefulness “animated their subjects as well as their style,” and that journalism was better for it. Read more.

How did you do? Come back next week for more questions, 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 trivia@theatlantic.com.

Thursday, February 26, 2026

1. Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital—in which the six main characters eat food from packets, exercise on stationary machines, and record the results of science experiments they conduct—is set in what real-life location?
   — From Deb Olin Unferth’s list of nine books for resetting your view of the world
2. Norman Rockwell’s 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With features what 6-year-old subject on her way into school, flanked by four federal agents?
   — From Clint Smith’s essay on commemorating Black history without federal support
3. Ben Rhodes, a national-security aide to President Obama, coined what term for the amorphous assemblage of like-minded thinkers in Washington’s foreign-policy establishment?
   — From Vivian Salama’s dispatch from the once-bustling, now-quiet State Department

And by the way, did you know that Rockwell—that master of sentimental, straightforward Americana—also once won an abstract-art competition?

In 1961, Rockwell started work on The Connoisseur, a painting showing a bald, besuited museum-goer looking at a work of modern art à la Jackson Pollock. To render The Connoisseur as faithfully as possible, Rockwell first made the drip-painted piece as a complete, separate image, then positioned the museum-goer as a cutout over it.

Left with the Pollock-style piece, Rockwell figured he might as well throw a pseudonym on it and submit it to an exhibition. At the Cooperstown Art Association, in New York, he won first prize.

Answers:

1. The International Space Station. Unferth writes that from the vantage of the book’s astronauts, “everything becomes unfamiliar”—yet they are reminded every time they look out an ISS window that, still, Earth keeps spinning along. See the rest of the picks.
2. Ruby Bridges. The little girl immortalized by Rockwell is the most famous of the New Orleans Four, the students who desegregated the city’s schools in 1960. Clint recently visited New Orleans—his hometown—and was reminded through his family’s stories how Black history is made up of not just the names in textbooks but also the figures whom people intimately “know and love” in their daily life. No authority can tell people not to learn that history. Read more.
3. The Blob. Vivian reports that “a disorienting and disheartening quiet has settled” over Foggy Bottom, where the Blob used to have a say (or two, or seven) in every foreign-policy decision. The Trump administration insists that the new top-down way of doing things is better, but morale is suffering tremendously as the longtime diplomatic corps has come to realize that experience is now a liability. Read more.

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

1. A year after then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi sarcastically clapped behind President Trump at his 2019 State of the Union address, she again upstaged him by doing what at the end of his 2020 speech?
   — From Jonathan Lemire’s article on the high stakes of this year’s presidential address
2. The Fields Medal–winning academic Terence Tao is widely considered to be the world’s greatest living practitioner of what discipline?
   — From Matteo Wong’s interview with Tao about what AI can contribute to his field
3. Featuring a scene in which the main character endorses a slime-green-colored credit card, The Moment is a recent mockumentary about the creation and promotion of what real-life 2024 album?
   — From Spencer Kornhaber’s essay on this recent pivot by the album’s creator

And by the way, did you know that the state of the union is strong? Or so has said nearly every president in nearly every State of the Union address since Ronald Reagan first deployed the magic adjective in his 1983 speech. Only George H. W. Bush never directly invoked “strong.”

The practice of assigning a descriptor at all to the state of the union goes back only a bit further, to Gerald Ford, who in 1975 was awfully frank with the country: “The state of the union,” he said, “is not good.” As if the United States had bristled at the pessimism (or perhaps it cleaned up its act?), the next year he revised: “The state of the union is better.”

Answers:

1. Ripping up her copy of his speech. Pelosi’s presence behind Trump was a reminder that Democrats controlled the House and thus subpoena power over the president, Jonathan writes. If Trump wants to avoid a similar fate come his next State of the Union, Jonathan says, this address is the time to steady his teetering tenure. Read more.
2. Mathematics. Matteo has spoken with Tao (who won math’s top prize in 2006) a handful of times in the past few years. Each time, Tao sounds a little more bullish on artificial intelligence’s mathematical abilities. In his words, AI has evolved from the equivalent of a “mediocre, but not completely incompetent” graduate student to a technology that is meaningfully changing the way humans do pioneering math. Read more.
3. Brat. Spencer recalls how around the release of Charli XCX’s album, the musician commented that “music is not important”; he recalls also how he hoped she was joking. But her pursuit since then of what Spencer calls a “mood-board mentality” of endless projects and “moments” with no time allotted for actual excellence suggests that she might have been sincere. Is she also right? Read more.

Monday, February 23, 2026

1. What candy bar made by the Hershey Company comprises a heap of chewy coconut filling enrobed in dark chocolate?
   — From Nicholas Florko’s article on the vanishing gap between candy and protein bars
2. Of seven major European polls conducted in the summer of 2016, only one correctly predicted what surprise political outcome?
   — From David Frum’s eulogy for Gallup’s presidential-approval polling
3. The novel Mother Night, about a man posing as a Nazi, was written by what American author who spent part of World War II imprisoned in a German slaughterhouse?
   — From Tom Nichols’s essay on the Republican Party’s Nazi problem

And by the way, did you know that the most venerable polling operation of the early 20th century—which had correctly predicted the 1916, 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932 elections—got the 1936 election wrong by 38 points?

In one of U.S. history’s great polling flops, The Literary Digest forecast that Alf Landon would beat Franklin D. Roosevelt by 14 points in the popular vote; instead, Roosevelt won it by 24—and took every state but two.

The problem? The Digest pulled together its sample from lists of people with registered cars or telephones—things that the people likeliest to vote Democrat didn’t typically have in the middle of the Great Depression.

Answers:

1. Mounds. Nicholas writes that the coconut-flavored protein bar he begins most days with is a dead ringer for the Hershey product—but certainly far healthier. Right? Well, Nicholas reports that many consumers are living a protein-bar delusion and that even the “good” options aren’t nearly as healthful as whole foods. Read more.
2. Brexit. The failure to forecast Brits’ decision to leave the European Union presaged polling’s accuracy collapse in the 2016 U.S. election, David writes, and the industry hasn’t really recovered from the shocks since. He suggests that reliable polling as a whole might be a bygone American institution. Read more.
3. Kurt Vonnegut. Witnessing the way that Nazi language and aesthetics have overtaken swaths of the GOP, Tom quotes a warning from Vonnegut’s novel: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Read more.

Friday, February 20, 2026

1. According to legend, the 16th-century Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León searched the New World for what mythical location?
   — From Jordan D. Metzl’s essay on the dubious science of longevity
2. What Black scholar founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 for the education of newly freed African Americans?
   — From Adam Harris’s essay on the radical feel to this year’s Black History Month
3. The gym Planet Fitness bans members from wearing what fabric prominently featured in a recent PSA starring an exercising Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
   — From Daniel Engber’s analysis of a specific, storied subtype of gym-goer

And by the way, did you know that the world’s first sweatpants were introduced in the 1920s by a French designer in search of a way to stretch with ease? Back then, they were made entirely of wool, which, while ostensibly allowable at Planet Fitness, seems rather more uncomfortable than the fabric options you can get today.

Answers:

1. The Fountain of Youth. Alas, Ponce de León never found it (unsurprising, considering he never actually looked for it), and Metzl writes that the wellness industry’s current obsession with longevity hacks will probably be similarly fruitless. He advises people not to buy into the hype and instead focus on adding “life to years” rather than “years to life.” Read more.
2. Booker T. Washington. Adam writes that Black history is much more complex than the simple story that critics say Americans no longer need to learn. He gives as an example the legacy of Washington, who for all his greatness was ready to settle for second-class citizenship for his fellow Black Americans and himself. Read more.
3. Denim. Daniel is certain that the explanation for RFK Jr.’s attire in the viral video of him in the sauna, on the pickleball court, and even in the hot tub is that Kennedy is simply a jeans guy. Allow Daniel to explain all the meaning and history that title carries. Read more.

Thursday, February 19, 2026

1. A 1934 government inventory of what area tallied 13,500 Eskimo, 3,500 Danes, 8,000 sheep, and the world’s largest deposit of the strategic mineral cryolite?
   — From Timothy W. Ryback’s essay on a historical figure’s pursuit of the place
2. Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė recently said that what country of hers made a mistake in allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital, Vilnius?
   — From Simon Shuster and Vivian Salama’s article on the countries caught between the United States and China
3. What five-letter word do behavioral scientists use to describe a subtle psychological cue—such as placing healthy food at eye level at the grocery store—that gives people a little push to act a particular way?
   — From Rob Wolfe’s essay on the long shift of systemic responsibilities to the individual

And by the way, did you know that barcode scanning was initially greeted with a huge backlash? The first item ever scanned by barcode was a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum at a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, in June 1974, but by the end of the ’70s, only about 1 percent of stores had adopted barcodes.

Consumers were worried that the tech would be used to rip them off. Advocacy groups mounted campaigns against the barcode, and protesters even picketed stores that used scanners. Others swore that the barcode was the biblical “mark of the beast.”

Obviously, it eventually caught on, and people got over their fears—though if you ever get rung up at $6.66, maybe offer to round to the next dollar, just in case.

Answers:

1. Greenland. And that 1934 government was actually Nazi Germany. Ryback traces what appears to have been Adolf Hitler’s lifelong obsession with Greenland—a fixation that led Hitler to pursue Greenland’s military and economic resources after his unsuccessful tariffs created a domestic mess in Germany. Read more.
2. Lithuania. Lithuania tacked toward Taiwan (and thus the United States) when Joe Biden was still president, but Simon and Vivian report that the Trump presidency has not been kind to Lithuania and other small countries like it. Rather, they write, the United States’ focus on the United States has forced former partners to seek—not always successfully—their own “strategic balance” with China. Read more.
3. Nudge. It seemed for a time during the Barack Obama years, Wolfe writes, that nudge politics were going to save the world, but research has since revealed how ineffective these pushes are (unless they’re trying to get people to do the wrong thing, in which case they work much better). Read more.

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

1. What name is shared by the city that’s home to the oldest continuously operating university in North America and the one that’s home to Europe’s third-oldest?
   — From Rose Horowitch’s article about elite universities’ satellite campuses
2. All major categories of competition at this year’s Winter Olympics feature mixed-gender events, save for what sport considered too dangerous for the combining of men and women?
   — From Christie Aschwanden’s essay on these Olympics’ boon to women’s sports
3. By what colorful name did Jesse Jackson refer to his vision of Americans of all creeds, races, and backgrounds uniting to overcome inequality?
   — From Adam Serwer’s essay reflecting on Jackson’s legacy after his death this week

And by the way, did you know that the University of Bologna is nearly a millennium old? It’s the world’s oldest university that was founded as such (at least one older university started as a madrasa), and its alumni include Copernicus, Dante, and more than one pope.

Imagine trying to write a halfway-decent poem for an assignment, and your classmate turns in the Divine Comedy. Then again, at least you’d have had a leg up on Copernicus, who probably got marked off plenty for insisting that the Earth actually orbits the sun.

Answers:

1. Cambridge. Time was, colleges stuck to the spot where they were built, and globally recognized elite schools mostly still do (see Harvard and Britain’s Cambridge staying put). But Rose reports that more and more universities just below that top tier are trying to burnish their reputation by creating a network of fully fledged satellite campuses. Read more.
2. Ice hockey. Aschwanden writes that gender mixing in the Olympics has steadily increased over recent Games and has probably done more to raise female athletes’ profiles than events featuring women alone. Read more.
3. The Rainbow Coalition. Adam writes that Jackson’s opponents did their best to turn him into “an anti-white, anti-Semitic demagogue” but that this caricature never reflected the actual man, who was steadfastly committed to egalitarianism. It’s easy to be cynical about Jackson, Adam writes. Don’t be. Read more.