The Atlantic Daily: What Do You Know About 2017?
Twelve questions on topics we covered, from blackmail to aliens
The Atlantic Daily’s news quiz highlights the hidden nuggets of knowledge that inform each day’s events. To wrap up the year, we’ve compiled a series of questions on some of the topics that we covered in 2017—from health care to catfishing. Test your memory below, and find our coverage of today’s news here.
January–March: Team Trump
1. The Russian word for state-sponsored blackmail is ______________.
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2. An August 2014 memo authored by ____________ shaped the Trump campaign’s anti-immigration platform.
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3. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is well respected as a philanthropist in ____________, Michigan.
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Answers: Kompromat / Kellyanne Conway / Grand Rapids
April–June: Costs of Living
4. About ____________ percent of all U.S. households subscribe to Amazon Prime.
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5. ____________ percent of Americans spend as much on health care a year as everyone else combined.
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6. An estimated ____________ Hong Kong residents live in “coffin homes,” or tiny, subdivided housing units.
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July–September: Nature’s Power
7. The end-Permian mass extinction—the worst such event in Earth’s history—is believed to have been caused by ____________.
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8. The word eclipse is rooted in an ancient Greek word meaning “____________.”
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9. During the first two days of Hurricane Harvey, ____________ gallons of water fell on Houston, Texas.
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Answers: burning fossil fuels / abandonment / 9 trillion
October–December: Tech Futures
10. The term catfish—someone who creates a deceptive personal profile online—was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in the year ____________.
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11. New Zealand conservationists hope to use the gene-editing technology ____________ to eliminate rats and other invasive predators from the country by 2050.
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12. One of the most influential voices guiding China’s search for extraterrestrial intelligence is Liu Cixin, a ____________.
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Answers: 2014 / CRISPR / science-fiction writer
Time of Your Life
Happy birthday to Susan’s loving son Ryan (twice the age of YouTube); to Holly (a year younger than The Godfather); to Frank’s wife, Diane (18 years older than the Environment Protection Agency); to Amalia’s daughter Andrea (the same age as NAFTA); to Vivian’s husband, Aaron (twice the age of the International Space Station); and to Jim, who shares a birthday with Marilyn (both are 18 years older than Doctors Without Borders).
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