Atlantic Trivia reaches Week 3, which is by definition the most trivial of all: The word trivia originally referred to places where three (tri-) roads (-via) met in a crossing. If those slouch Romans had been more industrious builders, we might be playing quintivia or even septivia today.

That three-way intersection semantically drifted to mean “an open place,” which morphed into “public,” which turned into “commonplace”—hence, trivial. Read on for questions that are anything but.

Find last week’s questions here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily. • What actor wrote in one of her memoirs that it was second nature for her to play “birdbrains,” including characters whose sentences were full of “ums,” “you-knows,” “oh-wells,” and, perhaps m

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