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 #0065

Aug 25, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Superglue sets so fast because moisture, even the humidity in air, triggers it to harden.
  TRUE. Cyanoacrylate glue cures on contact with trace water, which is why it grabs skin so quickly.
- ✓ TRUE
  Non-stick pans are coated with PTFE, a polymer so slippery that very little will stick to it.
  TRUE. PTFE (Teflon) has an extremely low-friction surface that resists sticking.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Teflon was invented specifically for the Apollo space program to shield spacecraft from heat.
  FALSE. Teflon was discovered by accident in 1938, decades before Apollo, and wasn't created for spacecraft.
Round 2 LANGUAGE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'tip', meaning a gratuity, began as an acronym for 'To Insure Promptness' printed on jars in old English coffeehouses.
  FALSE. 'Tip' predates that story and is not an acronym; the 'To Insure Promptness' tale was invented long after the word was in use.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'gymnasium' derives from a Greek word connected to exercising naked, which was customary for athletes in ancient training grounds.
  TRUE. The Greek 'gymnos' means naked, and athletes trained without clothing.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'companion' breaks down into Latin roots meaning 'with' and 'bread' — literally, someone you share bread with.
  TRUE. It joins 'com-' (with) and 'panis' (bread), the idea of a messmate.
Round 3 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.
Round 4 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 5 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  Finnish and Hungarian belong to the same language family and are not part of the large group that includes English, French and Russian.
  TRUE. Both are Uralic (Finno-Ugric), unrelated to the Indo-European languages around them.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'assassin' is generally traced to an Arabic term historically linked to a medieval sect in the Middle East.
  TRUE. It goes back to 'hashishin', a name applied to members of that sect, then borrowed into European languages.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'pumpernickel' comes from Napoleon, who tasted the dark bread and called it 'pain pour Nicole', naming it after his horse Nicole.
  FALSE. That is a popular folk tale; 'pumpernickel' is German, combining a word for breaking wind with 'Nickel', a jibe at the coarse, hard-to-digest bread.
Round 6 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  The blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever lived, outweighing every dinosaur on record.
  TRUE. At up to about 180 tonnes, the blue whale exceeds any known dinosaur in mass.
- ✓ TRUE
  A blue whale's heart is roughly the size of a small car, and its tongue alone can weigh about as much as an elephant.
  TRUE. The heart weighs hundreds of kilograms, and the tongue's mass approaches that of an elephant.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Blue whales hunt by chasing down and swallowing large fish and seals, using bursts of speed to catch them.
  FALSE. They are filter feeders that engulf huge mouthfuls of water and strain out tiny krill with baleen.
Round 7 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Sea otters use rocks as tools to crack open shellfish, often keeping a favourite rock tucked in a loose pocket of skin under their arm.
  TRUE. They are one of the few mammals that use tools, storing a chosen stone in an armpit pouch.
- ✓ TRUE
  Sea otters sometimes hold hands or wrap themselves in kelp while sleeping so they do not drift apart.
  TRUE. Holding paws and anchoring in kelp keeps resting rafts together.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Sea otters keep warm with a thick layer of blubber, just like seals and whales.
  FALSE. Sea otters have almost no blubber; instead they rely on the densest fur of any animal to trap insulating air.
Round 8 HISTORY
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Ancient Sparta ran a powerful navy that dominated the Mediterranean and rivaled the Persian fleet at its height.
  FALSE — Sparta was a land power built on its infantry; it was Athens that commanded the great Greek navy.
- ✓ TRUE
  Sparta was known for a demanding, state-run military upbringing that shaped its male citizens from boyhood.
  TRUE — the agoge trained Spartan boys for a life centered on soldiering.
- ✓ TRUE
  At Thermopylae in 480 BC, a small Greek force under the Spartan king Leonidas held a narrow pass against Persia.
  TRUE — Leonidas and his allies made a famous last stand at the pass.
Round 9 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 10 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  The croissant's crescent shape is often linked to Vienna's kipferl pastry rather than to an original French invention.
  TRUE. The crescent kipferl is a Viennese ancestor; the croissant is part of 'viennoiserie,' pastries in the Vienna style.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The modern flaky, laminated butter croissant appears in French bakery guild records dating to the 1600s.
  FALSE. The laminated yeast-dough croissant is an early-20th-century development; no 1600s French guild recipe describes it.
- ✓ TRUE
  Layering dough with sheets of butter, called lamination, is what gives the croissant its flaky texture.
  TRUE. Rolling and folding butter into dough creates many thin layers that steam apart into flakes when baked.

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