Atlantic Trivia on Super Bowls and Super Ballerinas
And did you know that the Eiffel Tower has been more than a half-dozen different colors?
Updated with new questions at 3:40 p.m. ET on February 6, 2026.
Every year since 2003, the umbrella organization for quizzing outfits around the globe has put on the granddaddy of knowledge competitions. Nothing in the tiny, nerdy world of trivia confers more authority than winning the World Quizzing Championships.
Competitors must attempt to answer 240 questions, such as the following, from 2022: “Playing for Bangalore against Pune in the IPL in April 2013, who set a new record for the fastest century in professional cricket by reaching 100 off 30 balls?”
If it makes you feel better, the median number of correct answers the year of that test was 64. Then again, the following was a question in that championship too: “What is the seven-letter name of the signature burger that can be ordered in every Burger King?”
The next contest is this summer, but in the meantime, you have a few whoppers waiting for you in this week’s Atlantic Trivia. Consider them training.
Find previous questions here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily.
Friday, February 6, 2026
- Common Super Bowl side bets include the results of the coin toss, the length of the national anthem, and the attributes of what liquid that traditionally makes a postgame appearance?
— From Jacob Stern’s article on turbocharged sports gambling ahead of this year’s Super Bowl - What virtuosic ballet dancer known by his fans as Misha famously defected from the Soviet Union while on tour in North America in 1974?
— From Sara Krolewski’s essay on the new iron curtain that has descended in ballet - Syria gained its independence in 1946 from what country that had administered it and Lebanon under a League of Nations mandate since 1923?
— From Robert F. Worth’s autopsy on the regime of Bashar al-Assad
And by the way, did you know that there is only one Super Bowl not known by Roman numerals? Even the first four championship games—not numbered at the time—were retroactively labeled I, II, III, and IV.
Yet in 2016, we got Super Bowl 50. If you know your Roman numerals, you will see why: No team should be forced to play for the big W in a game known as the big L.
Have a great weekend!
Answers:
- Gatorade. Predicting what color the winning coach gets drenched with is a Super Bowl classic, but the big game’s betting this year will be at a different level entirely, Jacob writes, now that prediction markets and sportsbooks have penetrated deeper into American gambling habits than ever before. Read more.
- Mikhail Baryshnikov. As Russo-American relations thawed over the decades after Baryshnikov’s jeté away from the U.S.S.R., artistic exchange between the East and West flourished, and ballet—and culture generally—was better for it, Sara writes. But Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet hasn’t been to the United States since 2017; Sara wonders whether it will ever return to the West. Read more.
- France. The chaotic postindependence years created the conditions in Syria for Hafez al-Assad to seize power and establish a dictatorship—a state of affairs that Worth says the ruler made “seem natural” with his shrewd instinct for image and politics. His son, Bashar, could not have been more different. 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 [email protected].
Thursday, February 5, 2026
- What ancient symbol of a snake devouring its own tail symbolizes an eternally cyclical process?
— From Matteo Wong’s article on Moltbook, the social-media site for AI bots - Airing long before Best in Show or The Office, what 1938 radio broadcast do many film scholars consider one of the earliest (if unintentional) mockumentaries?
— From Paula Mejía’s essay on Catherine O’Hara’s mastery of the genre - What musical ensemble established in 1798 and still playing today is known by the nickname “the President’s Own”?
— From Lily Meyer’s essay on all the ill effects of closing the Kennedy Center
And by the way, did you know that the video clips in the opening credits of The Office were filmed by John Krasinski—Jim Halpert on the series—who made a preshow pilgrimage to its setting of Scranton, Pennsylvania? He captured the footage with a camera stuck out of a sunroof as he drove around the city.
A tour de Scranton would look different today. There’s now the Office museum exhibit, the Office-branded industrial tower, the Office mural, the other Office mural …
Answers:
- Ouroboros. Matteo’s essay is about Moltbook, where chatbots interact (at times indecipherably) with other chatbots, but he invokes the Ouroboros to describe the web writ large now—rife with “synthetic content responding to other synthetic content, bots posing as humans and, now, humans posing as bots.” Read more.
- The War of the Worlds. Orson Welles’s description of a fictional alien invasion was mistaken for the genuine article by many of its listeners. The late Catherine O’Hara’s portrayals of over-the-top mockumentary characters probably fooled fewer viewers, but, as Mejía writes, she still found something real and true in each eccentric. Read more.
- The U.S. Marine Band. Alas, even “the President’s Own” pulled out of a performance at the Kennedy Center amid the cancellations that resulted from President Trump’s takeover. Now no one will perform there for two years; Lily traces the many effects that will ripple out from Trump’s closure. Read more.
Wednesday, February 4, 2026
- On the June 18, 1972, front page of The Washington Post, the headline “5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here” referred to what location?
— From Ashley Parker’s essay on the systematic dismantling of the Post - What U.S. president elected during a time of national division appealed in his first inaugural address to “the better angels of our nature”?
— From Alexandra Petri’s humor piece imagining Donald Trump renovating Washington, D.C., landmarks - What global leader last summer celebrated his 90th birthday—or at least the 90th birthday for his current incarnation—in Dharamshala, India?
— From Hana Kiros’s article on the logical end point of “America First” foreign aid
And by the way, did you know that President George Washington gave the country’s shortest-ever inaugural address? His speech upon reelection was only 135 words, which takes about 45 seconds to deliver, at least by my rate of speech.
In contrast, President William Henry Harrison’s was 8,445 words. I did not try that one, because I have places to be (and, to be fair, when he tried it, he got pneumonia and died a month later).
Answers:
- The Watergate building. The Post’s coverage of the Nixon-administration scandal was one of its mythmaking achievements; Ashley argues that the journalism the paper scrappily pulled together every day in the decades thence was heroic too. This week’s deep cuts to the paper’s staff, she says, are killing it. Read more.
- Abraham Lincoln. After the announcement of Trump’s closing of the Kennedy Center (and his proposal for a 250-foot-tall Triumphal Arch), Alexandra imagines how he might remake the Lincoln Memorial, the Pentagon, and other Washington, D.C., sights. Read more.
- The Dalai Lama. As Hana reports, one newly appointed State Department official was eager to meet His Holiness at the shindig but decided not to go, considering that the United States had just slashed $12 million in aid to Tibetan exiles. The U.S. has a new philosophy on aid, Hana writes: strategy over charity. Read more.
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
- What American artist famous for dripping paint onto canvases laid on the floor got the idea from a demonstration of Navajo sand painting?
— From Susan Tallman’s article on exhibitions upending the thinking on Indigenous art - What novel was completed by E. M. Forster in 1914 but not published until 1971, after his death, owing to the titular character’s same-sex relationship?
— From Bekah Waalkes’s recommendations of books to read when you’re pressed for time - In the SALT, SALT II, and New START agreements between the United States and Russia (or the Soviet Union), what two words do the letters SA (or STA) euphemistically stand for?
— From Tom Nichols’s essay on this week’s expiration of New START
And by the way, did you know that the world’s oldest continuous art tradition is the rock painting of Australia’s Aboriginal people? The earliest artworks discovered on the island are estimated to be 30,000 years or older, and many Aboriginal artists still paint on rock walls.
In fact, it wasn’t until the 1970s that Aboriginal art began to be captured on anything more portable than stone or more durable than sand. The art on canvas is beautiful—but it will take quite the preservationist to keep it looking good in 42,206 C.E.
Answers:
- Jackson Pollock. The influence of Indigenous traditions on 20th-century avant-gardists is one of the essential elements of Art History 101, Tallman writes, but less examined is the inverse: “how European materials and images were repurposed by Indigenous artists.” That’s partly because we conceive of Indigenous art as frozen in the past, Tallman says, when—as some new books and exhibitions demonstrate—it is anything but. Read more.
- Maurice. For a story written when George V reigned, Maurice feels remarkably contemporary, Waalkes writes, and she reckons it can break through whatever might distract you from your precious chunks of reading time. See the rest of her picks.
- Strategic arms. In plain speak, that means nuclear weapons, whose proliferation the United States has sought to limit since at least 1972, when Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed the first SALT. But Tom frets that with New START—in force since 2011—being allowed to expire this week, the era of nuclear-arms control is over. Read more.
Monday, February 2, 2026
- The character Eponine “smiled a little, and died” in Marius’s arms in what book that follows her demise with pages and pages describing Paris’s 19th-century sewer system?
— From Walt Hunter’s essay on assigning students long, difficult books - Stephen Fishbach, the author of a new novel about reality TV, appears on what long-running show for two seasons—one set in Cambodia and the other in Brazil’s Tocantins highlands?
— From Julie Beck’s review of Fishbach’s book - Chile, Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand are among the 29 countries that share decision-making power over what internationally administered geographic area?
— From Christian Elliott’s article on the risk and promise of geoengineering
And by the way, did you know that since going up in the late 1880s, the Eiffel Tower has been painted more than half a dozen different colors? The structure was “Venetian red” at its construction and over the years has been brown, “yellow-brown,” “brownish-red,” and “reddish brown,” according to the monument’s official website.
All right, so not that different on the colors. However, each hue is really three shades apiece; the bottom third of the tower is painted darker than the middle third, and the middle darker than the top so that the paint job looks uniform against the gradient of the blue(ish) sky.
Answers:
- Les Misèrables. Hunter, a professor, writes that all of Victor Hugo’s sewer talk, frankly, bored him when he read the book as a kid, but that a lot of the reward of something like Les Mis comes from its length. Educators should trust that today’s students can still dive into a complicated, hefty book and end up finding it worthwhile, he says. Read more.
- Survivor. Everything on Survivor (and the many shows like it) comes down to “The Edit”—the way editors package a competitor’s appearance into a tidy narrative of the producers’ choosing—Julie writes. Fishbach’s new book, she says, thoughtfully explores what happens when we get lost in The Edit of our own lives. Read more.
- Antarctica. Those four countries are closest to the icy continent, which is governed by far fewer parties than the 193 members of the United Nations. The smaller number of Antarctic Treaty nations might make building a 50-mile underwater seawall to protect a melting glacier a little more feasible to coordinate than geoengineering measures that would require UN buy-in, Elliott writes. Read more.
