Baloney is a free daily lie-detection game. Each of ten rounds shows three short statements on one topic — exactly one is a plausible fabrication. You tap the fake before the timer, then every statement is revealed as true or false with a one-line truth, and you earn a shareable Baloney Detector verdict from 'Believes Everything' to 'Baloney Immune'. No account, no sign-up.

How do you play Baloney?

Open the site, read the three statements in each round, and tap the one you think is fabricated before the ~30-second timer runs out. After each round the fake is revealed along with the truth of all three statements, plus what percent of today's players got fooled. You win by smell, not recall — no trivia knowledge required.

Yes. Baloney is completely free and ad-supported, with no account, no sign-up, and nothing to install. A new set of ten rounds is released every day and is the same for everyone that day; your streak is saved in your browser.

Case File #0056

Aug 16, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Some ants can carry objects many times their own body weight, and ants can link their bodies into living rafts to survive floods.
  TRUE. Ants are famously strong for their size and will interlock into floating, water-resistant rafts.
- ✓ TRUE
  Ants communicate mainly through chemical signals called pheromones, laying scent trails that lead nestmates to food.
  TRUE. A forager leaves a pheromone trail that other ants follow and reinforce.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Ants are solitary insects that meet only briefly to mate before going their separate ways.
  FALSE. Ants are among the most social animals on Earth, living in colonies of thousands or millions with divided labour.
Round 2 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  A single cumulus cloud can weigh hundreds of tonnes, yet it floats because that mass is spread thinly across an enormous volume of air.
  TRUE — the water is dispersed as tiny droplets, so the cloud's density stays close to the surrounding air.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Snow is always white because it is made of frozen white ice crystals.
  FALSE — ice is actually clear; snow looks white because light scatters off the many surfaces of countless tiny crystals.
- ✓ TRUE
  No two snowflakes are structurally identical, because each one grows along a unique path of temperature and humidity.
  TRUE — the branching pattern records the exact conditions the flake passed through, making duplicates effectively impossible.
Round 3 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Hummingbirds can hover in place and are the only birds capable of sustained backward flight.
  TRUE — their figure-eight wingstroke generates lift on both the forward and backward sweep, enabling true backward flight.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Tiny hummingbirds survive long migrations by riding on the backs of larger geese for part of the journey.
  FALSE — this is an old folk myth; hummingbirds fly entirely under their own power, and ruby-throated ones cross the Gulf of Mexico nonstop.
- ✓ TRUE
  A hummingbird's heart can beat more than 1,000 times per minute during vigorous activity.
  TRUE — heart rates well over 1,000 beats per minute support their extreme metabolism.
Round 4 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Ice floats because water is unusual: it expands and grows less dense when it freezes.
  TRUE. Water's crystal structure spreads molecules apart, so ice is lighter than liquid water.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Coriolis effect decides which way water swirls down your bathroom drain in each hemisphere.
  FALSE. At a sink's scale the Coriolis force is far too weak; basin shape and initial motion decide the swirl.
- ✓ TRUE
  Salt lowers the freezing point of water, which is why it's scattered on icy roads in winter.
  TRUE. Dissolved salt makes water freeze at a lower temperature, helping melt road ice.
Round 5 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest freshwater lake in the world.
  TRUE. Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake, plunging over 1,600 metres.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Lake Victoria in Africa is the deepest lake on Earth, dropping more than 1,600 metres at its centre.
  FALSE. Lake Victoria is quite shallow (around 80 m); Baikal is the deepest lake, not Victoria.
- ✓ TRUE
  Lake Baikal holds roughly a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh surface water.
  TRUE. Baikal alone contains about 20% of Earth's unfrozen fresh surface water.
Round 6 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  The Black Death tore through Europe in the mid-1300s, killing a very large share of the continent's population.
  TRUE — the plague killed tens of millions, perhaps a third or more of Europeans.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  During the Black Death, physicians correctly blamed fleas on rats and quarantined the animals to halt the spread.
  FALSE — medieval doctors had no idea fleas or rats carried the disease; the flea-rat link was only understood in the 1890s.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'quarantine' comes from the Italian for forty days, the period ships were once held in isolation.
  TRUE — Venetian-era ports isolated arriving ships for forty days as a plague precaution.
Round 7 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  Auroras are triggered when charged particles streaming from the Sun collide with gases high in Earth's atmosphere.
  TRUE — Earth's magnetic field funnels these particles toward the poles, where they energize the upper-atmosphere gases.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The green in an aurora comes from sunlight reflecting off ice crystals high in the atmosphere.
  FALSE — the green light is emitted by oxygen atoms that were energized by incoming particles, not reflected sunlight.
- ✓ TRUE
  Auroras occur on other planets too, including Jupiter and Saturn.
  TRUE — any planet with a magnetic field and an atmosphere can host auroras, and gas giants show powerful ones.
Round 8 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  The Maya civilization developed a full writing system and strikingly accurate calendars across Mesoamerica.
  TRUE — Maya scribes recorded history in glyphs and tracked astronomical cycles precisely.
- ✓ TRUE
  Maya cities such as Tikal featured towering stone pyramids, temples, and palaces rising above the forest.
  TRUE — Tikal's stepped pyramids still loom over the Guatemalan jungle.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The ancient Maya predicted the world would end in 2012, which is exactly why their long calendar simply stops there.
  FALSE — the Maya predicted no apocalypse; 2012 merely closed one long-count cycle, and the calendar rolls onward.
Round 9 FOOD
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The browning of a seared steak is caused mainly by caramelization of the meat's own natural sugars.
  FALSE. Meat browning is mostly the Maillard reaction between amino acids and sugars; caramelization is a separate sugar-only process.
- ✓ TRUE
  The Maillard reaction is a reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that produces browning and new flavors.
  TRUE. This heat-driven reaction creates the savory flavors and brown color of roasted, seared, and baked foods.
- ✓ TRUE
  Caramelization involves the breakdown of sugars alone and generally begins at higher temperatures than many Maillard reactions.
  TRUE. Caramelization is pure sugar breakdown and typically needs higher heat than protein-plus-sugar browning.
Round 10 SPACE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Black holes act as cosmic vacuum cleaners, actively pulling in any matter within several light-years of them.
  FALSE. A black hole's gravity behaves like any other mass; you could orbit one safely from a distance, as planets orbit stars.
- ✓ TRUE
  The first direct image of a black hole's shadow was released in 2019, showing the giant one in galaxy M87.
  TRUE. The Event Horizon Telescope combined dishes worldwide to capture the glowing ring around it.
- ✓ TRUE
  Not even light can escape from within a black hole's event horizon, the boundary of no return.
  TRUE. Past that boundary, escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, so nothing gets back out.

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