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 #0070

Aug 30, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 HISTORY
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Thomas Edison single-handedly invented the light bulb, with no earlier inventor ever having produced an electric lamp.
  FALSE — electric lamps existed before Edison; he improved a practical, longer-lasting bulb rather than inventing the idea.
- ✓ TRUE
  Over his lifetime Thomas Edison was granted more than a thousand United States patents.
  TRUE — his name appears on 1,093 US patents.
- ✓ TRUE
  Edison developed the phonograph, one of the earliest devices able to record and play back sound.
  TRUE — his 1877 phonograph could capture and reproduce the human voice.
Round 2 SCIENCE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Microwave ovens cook food from the inside out, heating the center before the surface warms up.
  FALSE. Microwaves penetrate only a few centimeters and heat outer layers first; the center warms by conduction.
- ✓ TRUE
  A microwave oven heats food mainly by making water molecules rotate rapidly, producing heat.
  TRUE. The oscillating field flips water molecules back and forth, and that agitation generates the heat.
- ✓ TRUE
  Metal in a microwave can throw sparks because the field drives currents that build up at sharp edges.
  TRUE. Charges concentrate at points and edges, and the resulting arcing shows up as sparks.
Round 3 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  Canada's capital is Ottawa, a city selected as the seat of government by Queen Victoria in the 1850s.
  TRUE. Queen Victoria picked Ottawa as capital in 1857, a compromise between English and French Canada.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Turkey's capital is Istanbul, the country's largest city, which uniquely straddles two continents.
  FALSE. Turkey's capital is Ankara. Istanbul is the largest city and does span two continents, but it isn't the capital.
- ✓ TRUE
  Istanbul sits on both the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus strait.
  TRUE. The Bosphorus splits the city, so Istanbul genuinely lies on two continents.
Round 4 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 5 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Some wood frogs survive winter by letting much of their body freeze nearly solid, then thawing back to life in spring.
  TRUE — they flood their tissues with natural antifreeze-like sugars, stop their heart, and revive when they thaw.
- ✓ TRUE
  A frog's tongue is attached at the front of its mouth, letting it flip far outward to snatch insects.
  TRUE — the front-hinged tongue can be launched forward much farther than a rear-anchored one could.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Frogs have no teeth at all and crush their prey with strong muscular lips before swallowing.
  FALSE — most frogs do have small teeth on the upper jaw, and many use their retracting eyeballs, not their lips, to help push food down.
Round 6 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  Norse voyagers reached North America around the year 1000 and built a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
  TRUE — the excavated site confirms Europeans crossed the Atlantic centuries before Columbus.
- ✓ TRUE
  The Norse gave the name 'Vinland' to lands they explored west of their Greenland colonies.
  TRUE — the sagas describe Vinland, likely named for wild grapes or fertile meadows.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Viking warriors routinely wore horned helmets into battle, as proven by horned helmets recovered from their graves.
  FALSE — no genuine Viking horned battle helmet has ever been found; the image comes from 19th-century opera and art.
Round 7 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  Greenland is the world's largest island, though Australia is counted as a continent rather than an island.
  TRUE. By area, Greenland is the largest island; Australia is classed as a continent.
- ✓ TRUE
  If Greenland's ice sheet melted completely, global sea levels would rise by roughly seven metres.
  TRUE. The ice sheet holds enough water to raise oceans by about seven metres.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Greenland was named for its lush, green interior, which early explorers found covered in forests.
  FALSE. Its interior is almost entirely ice; the name is traditionally credited to Erik the Red's bid to attract settlers.
Round 8 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Radio waves, visible light, and X-rays are all electromagnetic radiation, differing only in wavelength.
  TRUE. They sit on the same spectrum; only their wavelength and energy set them apart.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The green flash sometimes seen at sunset happens when seawater reflects a burst of green light into the sky.
  FALSE. The green flash is caused by the atmosphere bending and splitting sunlight, not by the sea reflecting light.
- ✓ TRUE
  The sky looks blue because air molecules scatter short blue wavelengths of sunlight more than red ones.
  TRUE. Blue light scatters more strongly in all directions, so the daytime sky appears blue.
Round 9 ANIMALS
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A goldfish has a memory span of only about three seconds, so it experiences its bowl as brand new on every lap.
  FALSE. Goldfish remember for weeks or months and can be trained to respond to cues, times and simple tasks.
- ✓ TRUE
  Goldfish can be taught to recognise feeding times and to nudge a lever or target to earn food.
  TRUE. Goldfish learn feeding schedules and can be trained with simple lever or colour tasks.
- ✓ TRUE
  Goldfish belong to the carp family and, cared for well, can live for well over a decade.
  TRUE. Goldfish are cyprinids (carp relatives) and routinely live 10-15 years or more in good conditions.
Round 10 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  A foraging honeybee tells hivemates where flowers are with a 'waggle dance' whose angle and length encode direction and distance.
  TRUE — the dance's tilt relative to vertical signals bearing to the Sun, and its duration signals how far to fly.
- ✓ TRUE
  Honeybees can be trained to recognize individual human faces by learning to combine facial features.
  TRUE — despite tiny brains, bees learn to tell faces apart using a feature-combining strategy.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Honeybees never sleep; they work in continuous shifts inside the hive until they die.
  FALSE — honeybees do sleep, resting with lowered muscle tone and drooping antennae, and sleep loss impairs their dance signaling.

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