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 #0059

Aug 19, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 SPACE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Mercury, being the closest planet to the Sun, is therefore the hottest planet in the solar system.
  FALSE. Venus is hotter; Mercury has almost no atmosphere to hold heat, so its night side turns freezing cold.
- ✓ TRUE
  Mercury has almost no atmosphere, so its surface temperature swings dramatically between day and night.
  TRUE. Without air to trap heat, the surface bakes in daylight and plunges far below freezing after dark.
- ✓ TRUE
  Mercury spins three times on its axis for every two orbits it completes around the Sun.
  TRUE. This unusual 3-to-2 spin-orbit lock means a solar day on Mercury lasts two of its years.
Round 2 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  The Korean writing system Hangul was created in the fifteenth century and designed so that consonant shapes echo the position of the mouth and tongue.
  TRUE. Hangul was purpose-built, and several letter forms sketch how the speech organs make the sound.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'emoji' comes from blending the English words 'emotion' and 'icon', reflecting the little symbols' Silicon Valley origins.
  FALSE. 'Emoji' is Japanese, from 'e' (picture) and 'moji' (character); its resemblance to 'emotion' is a coincidence, and the pictographs originated in Japan.
- ✓ TRUE
  The Japanese writing system combines more than one script, including kanji characters that were originally borrowed from Chinese.
  TRUE. Modern Japanese mixes kanji with the kana syllabaries hiragana and katakana.
Round 3 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  A flame's color hints at its temperature, with blue flames generally hotter than orange or yellow ones.
  TRUE. Bluer flames indicate more complete, hotter combustion than yellow-orange ones.
- ✓ TRUE
  Fire needs three things at once: oxygen, fuel, and heat, and removing any one will put it out.
  TRUE. This is the fire triangle; take away any side and combustion stops.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Water extinguishes fire mainly by being heavier than the flames and physically pushing them downward.
  FALSE. Water works by cooling the fuel below ignition and by steam crowding out oxygen, not by weight.
Round 4 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  Some bamboo species can grow nearly a metre in a single day, making them among the fastest-growing plants on Earth.
  TRUE. Certain species set growth records of close to a metre per day under ideal conditions.
- ✓ TRUE
  Bamboo is technically a grass, closely related to wheat, rice and lawn grasses.
  TRUE. Despite its woody, tree-like size, bamboo belongs to the grass family Poaceae.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Bamboo flowers and produces seeds every single year, just like most common garden plants.
  FALSE. Many bamboo species flower only once every several decades, sometimes in synchronised events across entire regions.
Round 5 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  The gold in Earth's crust was likely forged in extreme cosmic events, such as colliding neutron stars, and delivered by ancient asteroid impacts.
  TRUE. Heavy elements like gold form in rare, violent events and were later delivered to the surface.
- ✓ TRUE
  Gold is so malleable that a single gram can be hammered into a sheet of about one square metre.
  TRUE. Gold's extraordinary ductility allows a gram to be beaten into a remarkably thin, wide foil.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Gold is the densest naturally occurring element, heavier than osmium, iridium and platinum.
  FALSE. Osmium and iridium are denser than gold; gold is very dense but not the densest element.
Round 6 SPACE
- ✓ TRUE
  A single rotation of Venus takes longer than one full trip around the Sun, so its day is longer than its year.
  TRUE. Venus spins once every 243 Earth days but orbits the Sun in about 225, so a day outlasts a year.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Venus is the only planet in the solar system that spins in the opposite direction to its orbit around the Sun.
  FALSE. Uranus also rotates in a backwards, tilted-on-its-side fashion, so Venus is not the only one.
- ✓ TRUE
  Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, even though Mercury orbits closer to the Sun.
  TRUE. Venus's thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere traps heat, pushing surface temperatures above 460 degrees Celsius.
Round 7 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  An owl can rotate its head about 270 degrees, more than three-quarters of a full turn.
  TRUE. Extra neck vertebrae and specially adapted blood vessels let it turn far beyond what a human neck allows.
- ✓ TRUE
  An owl's eyes are fixed in their sockets, so it must turn its whole head to look around.
  TRUE. Owls cannot roll their eyes side to side, which is why they swivel their heads instead.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Owls have eyes powerful enough to see clearly in complete, pitch-black darkness.
  FALSE. Owls see very well in low light but, like every eye, still need some light; they cannot see in total darkness.
Round 8 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  Cacao was consumed as a bitter, often frothy drink in Mesoamerica long before sweetened chocolate existed.
  TRUE. Mesoamerican peoples drank spiced, unsweetened, frothed cacao; sugar-sweetened chocolate came after European contact.
- ✓ TRUE
  Solid eating chocolate as we know it emerged in the 19th century after ways to work with cocoa butter developed.
  TRUE. Advances in pressing and recombining cocoa butter in the 1800s made moldable eating chocolate possible.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  White chocolate counts as true chocolate because it contains roasted cocoa solids just like dark chocolate.
  FALSE. White chocolate contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids, which is why it lacks the brown color and 'chocolatey' taste.
Round 9 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  The ocean generates a large share of Earth's oxygen, much of it produced by photosynthesizing plankton near the surface.
  TRUE — marine phytoplankton are estimated to produce roughly half of the planet's oxygen.
- ✓ TRUE
  Sound travels several times faster through water than through air.
  TRUE — sound moves about 1,500 m/s in seawater versus about 340 m/s in air, roughly four times faster.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Mariana Trench is so deep that sunlight only reaches its bottom around midday.
  FALSE — no sunlight reaches the bottom at all; light fades out within the first kilometer, and the trench floor lies near 11 km down in total darkness.
Round 10 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  A saguaro cactus can live for more than 150 years and may not grow its first arm until it is several decades old.
  TRUE. These giants are slow-growing and long-lived, branching only after many years.
- ✓ TRUE
  A cactus carries out photosynthesis in its thick green stem, while its leaves are reduced to spines.
  TRUE. The spines are modified leaves; the fleshy stem does the photosynthesising.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A cactus stores water by growing a large internal bladder that it fills from its roots like a tank.
  FALSE. Cacti store water throughout their thick, spongy stem tissue rather than in a single bladder-like organ.

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