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 #0061

Aug 21, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall.
  TRUE. Angel Falls has the highest uninterrupted drop of any waterfall, near 979 metres.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Niagara Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world, with a drop of more than 800 metres.
  FALSE. Niagara is only about 50 metres tall; the tallest waterfall is Angel Falls.
- ✓ TRUE
  Niagara Falls lies on the border between the United States and Canada.
  TRUE. Niagara Falls straddles the U.S.-Canada border between Ontario and New York.
Round 2 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  A sloth moves so slowly that algae grows in its fur, giving it a greenish tint that helps it hide among leaves.
  TRUE. The algae thrives in the sloth's grooved fur and lends a green camouflage among the canopy.
- ✓ TRUE
  Three-toed sloths climb down from their tree only about once a week, usually to defecate at the base of the trunk.
  TRUE. They make a risky weekly descent to the ground almost exclusively to relieve themselves.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  When threatened, a sloth can sprint at up to 15 kilometres an hour to outrun a predator.
  FALSE. Sloths are among the slowest mammals; on the ground they typically crawl at a fraction of a kilometre per hour.
Round 3 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'thug' entered English from a South Asian language, originally naming members of an organised band of robbers in India.
  TRUE. It comes from a Hindi/Urdu word for a cheat or robber, tied to gangs that preyed on travellers.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'shampoo' comes from the French 'champ pur', meaning 'pure field', a nod to the herbal meadows used in early hair washes.
  FALSE. 'Shampoo' comes from a Hindi word meaning to press or massage; it first meant a body massage before shifting to hair-washing, and has no French 'pure field' origin.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'juggernaut', for an unstoppable force, derives from a Sanskrit name for a Hindu deity, linked to massive processional temple carts.
  TRUE. It comes from Jagannath, whose huge festival cart gave the sense of a crushing, unstoppable thing.
Round 4 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 5 SCIENCE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Hot air rises because heat itself is a light, floating substance that drifts upward through cooler air.
  FALSE. Heat isn't a substance; hot air rises simply because it expands and becomes less dense than cool air.
- ✓ TRUE
  A hot-air balloon floats because the heated air inside it is less dense than the cooler air outside.
  TRUE. Warming the trapped air makes it lighter than the surrounding air, giving the balloon lift.
- ✓ TRUE
  Convection currents form as warmer, less dense fluid rises while cooler, denser fluid sinks.
  TRUE. This continual rise-and-sink cycle is what drives convection in air and water.
Round 6 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  Obsidian is a natural volcanic glass that forms when lava cools so quickly that mineral crystals have no time to grow.
  TRUE — the near-instant cooling locks the material into a glassy, non-crystalline state.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Molten rock is called magma once it reaches the surface, and lava while it is still underground.
  FALSE — it's the reverse: molten rock is magma underground and lava once it erupts onto the surface.
- ✓ TRUE
  Measured from its base on the ocean floor to its peak, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller than Mount Everest.
  TRUE — base-to-summit it exceeds 10,000 m, beating Everest, which is merely the highest point above sea level.
Round 7 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'panic' derives from the Greek god Pan, who was blamed for the sudden, groundless fear that could seize people in lonely places.
  TRUE. 'Panic' fear was 'of Pan', the wild god thought to cause unexplained dread.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'volcano' comes from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge.
  TRUE. The fiery mountains were linked to Vulcan's underground workshops.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'cereal' comes from the Latin 'serere', meaning 'to sow seeds', later respelled with an initial 'c'.
  FALSE. 'Cereal' comes from Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain and agriculture, not from 'serere'.
Round 8 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Sound travels roughly four times faster in water than it does in air.
  TRUE. Water's tighter molecular packing carries vibrations far quicker than air does.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Sound cannot pass through solid steel, because its tightly packed atoms block the vibrations entirely.
  FALSE. Sound travels through steel even faster than through air, at several kilometers per second.
- ✓ TRUE
  In the vacuum of space, sound cannot travel because there are no molecules to carry the vibrations.
  TRUE. Sound needs a medium; with no particles to pass the vibration along, space is silent.
Round 9 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  The first computer 'bug' was reportedly an actual moth found stuck in a relay of an early computer in 1947.
  TRUE. A real moth was taped into the logbook of the Harvard Mark II, popularizing the term.
- ✓ TRUE
  An early IBM commercial disk drive from the 1950s stored only about 5 megabytes yet weighed over a ton.
  TRUE. The IBM RAMAC held around 5 MB across huge spinning platters and was enormous by today's standards.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The QWERTY keyboard layout was carefully designed to let typists type as fast as humanly possible.
  FALSE. QWERTY was arranged to reduce typebar jams on early typewriters, not to maximize typing speed.
Round 10 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  A camel's hump stores fat, not water, and acts as an energy reserve the animal can metabolise.
  TRUE. The hump is fatty tissue; it does not hold a reservoir of water.
- ✓ TRUE
  Camels can close their nostrils and have long eyelashes plus a third eyelid to keep out blowing sand.
  TRUE. These adaptations protect the eyes and airways in desert storms.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Camels store large reserves of water inside their humps, which is how they survive weeks without drinking.
  FALSE. Their water conservation comes from physiology and behaviour, not a hump water tank — the hump is fat.

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