Today’s Atlantic Trivia: Ready for Your Close-Up?
In a recent reflection published in *The Atlantic*, the value of knowledge and education is playfully challenged through the lens of a speech delivered by Mark Twain at Yale University in 1888. Twain, having received an honorary degree, humorously advised the institution to reconsider its approach to learning, suggesting that an excess of knowledge—specifically in areas he deemed impractical—could be counterproductive. He famously critiqued the university’s fascination with astronomy, arguing that pursuing new celestial bodies was futile without addressing the existing knowledge base. Furthermore, he dismissed the study of Greek for its complexity and questioned the relevance of mathematical research in a college setting, advocating instead for a focus on tangible facts. Though Twain’s tongue-in-cheek recommendations were likely not intended to be taken seriously, they provoke a thought-provoking discussion about the nature of education and the pursuit of knowledge.
The article also transitions into a trivia segment that engages readers with questions derived from Caitlin Flanagan’s nostalgic essay about her childhood experiences at the movies. The trivia questions reference iconic films such as *Sunset Boulevard*, *Jaws*, and *The Wizard of Oz*, inviting readers to recall memorable quotes and plot details. Flanagan reflects on how the movies of her youth felt grander, a sentiment she attributes to both her father’s enthusiasm and a perceived decline in Hollywood’s storytelling creativity. This juxtaposition of Twain’s critique and Flanagan’s cinematic reminiscence highlights a broader cultural conversation about the evolution of knowledge, storytelling, and the arts, prompting readers to ponder how these elements shape our personal and collective experiences. The article concludes with a light-hearted challenge for readers to engage with trivia, fostering a sense of community and shared learning in the pursuit of knowledge.
Overall, this exploration of Twain’s humorous skepticism and Flanagan’s nostalgic reflections serves as a reminder that while the quest for knowledge is invaluable, it is equally important to balance it with critical thinking and an appreciation for the stories that shape our understanding of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWRki28Uv08
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. “I told him it was no economy to go on piling up and piling up raw material in the way of new stars and comets and asteroids that we couldn’t ever have any use for till we had worked off the old stock.”
Greek would have to go “because it is so hard to spell with, and so impossible to read after you get it spelled,” and research in math “was not suited to the dignity of a college, which should deal in facts, not guesses and suppositions.”
Yale did not heed the advice, and I don’t think Twain would really have wanted you to, either. So please—guess and suppose away.
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Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Today’s questions all come from
Caitlin Flanagan’s essay reflecting on
a childhood spent going to the movies with her father.
In
Sunset Boulevard
, the fading star Norma Desmond replies to the suggestion that she “used to be big” with: “I am big. It’s the pictures that” did
what
?
“You’ll never go in the water again” was the tagline of
what 1975 summer blockbuster
?
In
The Wizard of Oz
, Dorothy has
what last name
—a word for a weather event not dissimilar to the twister that lifts her out of Kansas?
One of the most popular films of the 1970s disaster craze—remade in 2006—follows passengers climbing to the bottom (or top?) of
what capsized luxury liner
?
What Alfred Hitchcock movie
opens with a scene in a pet shop, where the protagonist inquires about some odd animal behavior outside?
And by the way, did you know that the famous “underwater” shot that opens
Sunset Boulevard
—with a camera apparently at the bottom of a swimming pool looking up at a floating drowned man—was captured entirely on dry land?
The cameras of the 1950s couldn’t be submerged, so the director, Billy Wilder, installed a mirror on the bottom of the pool and shot from above to keep the equipment dry. Actors, then as now, were plenty waterproof—so William Holden ended the shoot soaked.
Until tomorrow!
Answers:
“Got small.”
The movies of Caitlin’s youth felt so much bigger, she writes, thanks partly to her father’s enthusiasm for them, but also thanks to the apparent intellectual exhaustion of Hollywood. “We’re running out of stories to tell one another,” she argues—but many of us would be too tired or inattentive to listen anyway.
Read more.
Jaws
.
Gale.
The Poseidon.
The Birds
.
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 formidable fact—send it my way at
trivia@theatlantic.com
.
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Minoxidil is the active ingredient in many products that treat
what common condition
, known scientifically as alopecia?
— From Yasmin Tayag’s
“America Refuses to Go [REDACTED]”
The company Lifetouch is the largest U.S. provider of
what product
typically offered once an academic year, in early fall?
— From Annie Midori Atherton’s
“What’s the Point of [REDACTED] Anymore?”
What hard-boiled detective
sported a famous two-way wrist radio across America’s mid-century comic strips?
— From Ian Bogost’s
“Get Your Kid a Watch”
And by the way, did you know that Garry Trudeau, the creator of
Doonesbury
, won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his work with the comic strip? Gerald Ford, who was then president, said that year that “there are only three major vehicles to keep us informed as to what is going on in Washington: the electronic media, the print media, and
Doonesbury
, not necessarily in that order.”
Only one other comic strip—called
Bloom County
—has won the Pulitzer Prize; Garfield is going to have to bring some real nuance to his thoughts about Mondays if he’s ever going to compete.
Answers:
Hair loss.
Yasmin reports on how the hair-loss-prevention industry, which has long focused on thinning in men, is ready to welcome the many Millennial women who are warming up to the idea of Rogaine. But there’s still a big stigma around seeking treatment.
Read more.
School photos.
The Photo Day tradition seems silly considering that every parent has a camera in their pocket now, but families still shell out for the (often ludicrously expensive) school shots, Atherton writes. They’re kitschy and awkward—but that might be the point.
Read more.
Dick Tracy.
Ian, who recently purchased a smartwatch for his youngest daughter, writes that the low end of the kid-watch market is full of useless “Dick Tracy novelties.” So he went full Apple, and he has found that the watch is the perfect training “phone” for his kid.
Read more.
Monday, December 1, 2025
From the
edition of The
Atlantic
Daily
by David A. Graham:
William Shakespeare’s only son, who died at age 11, had
what name
—just a letter off from one of the bard’s most famous tragic heroes?
— From James Shapiro’s
“The Long History of the [REDACTED] Myth”
In AI-safety discussions, the likelihood that artificial intelligence causes global cataclysm is popularly expressed as
what statistical term
?
— From Charlie Warzel’s
“The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT”
Germans sometimes call their country “
Das Land der Dichter und Denker
,” or the land of
what two vocations
—the former of which would apply to, say, Rilke, Schiller, and Goethe, and the latter to Hegel, Heidegger, and Arendt (or you right now)?
— From Isaac Stanley-Becker’s
“The New German War Machine”
And by the way, did you know that Shakespeare’s grave doesn’t bear his name? What it does bear is a curse. The engraving warns would-be tamperers, “Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, / To dig the dust enclosed here. / Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.”
Evidence suggests that the curse didn’t ward off everyone; ground-penetrating radar revealed in 2016 that Shakespeare’s skull is almost certainly missing. Of course, researchers could have opened the grave to make sure—but would you take that risk?
Answers:
Hamnet.
The myth that Hamnet’s death begot the tragedy of
Hamlet
has persisted for centuries, Shapiro writes, but the fact that it is compelling—see Chloé Zhao’s new movie,
Hamnet
—does not mean that it is true.
Read more.
p(doom).
Whether or not you use the term, you’ve probably considered the probability of AI-occasioned doom, Charlie writes as ChatGPT turns three. In fact, that mental precarity is already a big chunk of AI’s legacy, he argues, and the tech’s ever-evolving nature heightens the anxiety.
Read more.
Poets and thinkers.
To varying degrees over the decades, this self-conception has been about both taking pride in Germany’s intellectual tradition and renouncing the country’s militarism. As Isaac reports, this makes for a fraught transition as Germany gradually abandons pacifism and rearms against a destabilized world.
Read more.
