When Donald Trump brokered the Abraham Accords in his first term, he heralded the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states as “the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region.” In truth, the Accords were a diplomatic handshake between countries that had never fought a war. They did not resolve the region’s conflicts, and were not the seismic achievement that Trump presented them to be.

If the secret to understanding a strongman is to identify his greatest weakness, one place to start with Donald Trump is his obsession with his own eventual obituaries. Trump knows that they will mention his history-making presidencies, his ostentatious wealth, and his unusual charisma—but he also is aware that when he dies, people will remember his conviction on 34 felony counts, and that there is nothing he can do about it.

As far as government shutdowns go, this one has so far lacked the round-the-clock chaos of its predecessors. There have been no dramatic late-night clashes on the floors of Congress, no steep stock-market plunges driven by panicked investors, no prime-time presidential addresses from the Oval Office. Even the running clocks on cable-news chyrons have disappeared.

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The winter of early 1981 was a simpler time, a gentler time. Like so many college students, I was watching Saturday Night Live in the living room of my small dorm when the SNL cast member Charles Rocket dropped an f-bomb on live television. I looked around at my fellow students.

Updated with new questions at 4:10 p.m. ET on October 8, 2025.
Welcome back for another week of The Atlantic’s un-trivial trivia, drawn from recently published stories. Without a trifle in the bunch, maybe what we’re really dealing with here is—hmm—“significa”? “Consequentia”?
Whatever butchered bit of Latin you prefer, read on for today’s questions. (Last week’s questions can be found here.)
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