Updated with new questions at 2:45 p.m. ET on November 25, 2025.

A seminal mid-century paper by the psychologist George Miller asserted that the human brain can hold seven items in short-term memory, give or take a couple. A person can chunk—that is, group items together in sensible, memorable units—to get a bit more bang, but modern psychologists think the species can handle only about four of those.

None of the chunks in the great minestrone that is The Atlantic is going anywhere, though, so enjoy leisurely encoding them in your much more capacious long-term memory. Then dip into a little trivia to see what stuck.

Find last week’s questions here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily. • What political-science term is a combo of the last n

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