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 #0071

Aug 31, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  A 'shooting star' is not a star at all but a small piece of space rock or dust burning up high in the atmosphere.
  TRUE. The streak of light is a meteor — a meteoroid heated to incandescence by friction with the air.
- ✓ TRUE
  Most meteors that create a visible streak are tiny, often no larger than a grain of sand.
  TRUE. Even a dust-sized particle can produce a bright flash as it vaporises.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Shooting stars are real stars falling out of the sky, and each one leaves a gap in the night sky where the star used to be.
  FALSE. The stars remain in place; what falls is a tiny meteoroid burning up, far closer than any star.
Round 2 SPACE
- ✓ TRUE
  The Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth and has been returning astronomical observations since 1990.
  TRUE. Launched aboard the shuttle in 1990, it has been serviced by astronauts and still operates.
- ✓ TRUE
  A light-year measures distance, not time — specifically how far light travels over the course of one year.
  TRUE. Despite the word 'year,' it's a unit of distance, roughly 9.5 trillion kilometers.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun at about four light-years, is bright enough to spot with the naked eye.
  FALSE. Proxima Centauri is a dim red dwarf, far too faint to see without a telescope despite being closest.
Round 3 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  Coffee's use as a brewed drink is strongly associated with its early spread through the Arabian Peninsula.
  TRUE. Brewed coffee culture took strong early root in Arabia, spreading through its ports and cities.
- ✓ TRUE
  Coffee 'beans' are actually the seeds found inside the fruit of the coffee plant, often called cherries.
  TRUE. Each coffee 'bean' is a seed from inside a small red fruit, so 'bean' is really a seed.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Espresso is made from a special species of coffee bean that is grown only at high altitudes in Italy.
  FALSE. Espresso is a brewing method using pressurized hot water; it is not a bean, and coffee is not commercially grown in Italy.
Round 4 GEOGRAPHY
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain on Earth when measured from its base to its summit.
  FALSE. Measured base-to-summit, Hawaii's Mauna Kea is tallest; Everest is highest above sea level.
- ✓ TRUE
  Mount Everest is the highest point on Earth above sea level, reaching roughly 8,849 metres.
  TRUE. Everest's summit is the highest land elevation measured from sea level.
- ✓ TRUE
  Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa and a free-standing volcano rising from surrounding plains.
  TRUE. Kilimanjaro is Africa's tallest peak and famously stands alone rather than in a range.
Round 5 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  The Wright brothers made the first sustained, powered, controlled airplane flights in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
  TRUE — their December 1903 flights are recognized as the first of their kind.
- ✓ TRUE
  Before building aircraft, the Wright brothers ran a bicycle sales and repair shop in Dayton, Ohio.
  TRUE — their bicycle business funded and informed their aeronautical experiments.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Wright brothers' very first flight lasted well over an hour and covered more than thirty miles.
  FALSE — the first flight lasted about twelve seconds and covered roughly 120 feet, not miles.
Round 6 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  A rainbow is actually a full circle of light; from the ground the horizon simply hides its lower half, so we see only an arc.
  TRUE. A rainbow is a complete circle — pilots and skydivers sometimes see the whole ring.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A rainbow always shows exactly seven distinct colour bands, a count fixed by the physics of how light splits.
  FALSE. A rainbow is a continuous spectrum with no fixed number of bands; 'seven colours' is a naming convention, not physics.
- ✓ TRUE
  In the fainter secondary rainbow that can appear above the main one, the order of the colours is reversed.
  TRUE. The outer bow of a double rainbow runs its colours in reverse, from a second internal reflection.
Round 7 NATURE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A tree's age can be read from its rings, and the rings on the shaded north side are always spaced about twice as wide as those on the south.
  FALSE — ring width tracks each year's growing conditions, not a fixed compass ratio; there's no reliable 2-to-1 north-south rule.
- ✓ TRUE
  Trees can trade nutrients and pass warning signals to one another through underground fungal networks linking their roots.
  TRUE — symbiotic fungi form networks that shuttle carbon, nutrients, and stress signals between connected trees.
- ✓ TRUE
  The oldest known individual trees, bristlecone pines, have lived for more than 4,000 years.
  TRUE — some Great Basin bristlecone pines are over 4,800 years old, among the oldest living non-clonal organisms.
Round 8 LANGUAGE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The expression 'OK' originated solely as a shortening of 'Old Kinderhook', a US president's nickname, with no earlier written use.
  FALSE. 'OK' first appeared in 1839 as a jokey misspelling standing for 'oll korrect'; the Old Kinderhook campaign later reinforced it but did not create it.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'avocado' traces back, through Spanish, to a word in the Nahuatl language of central Mexico.
  TRUE. Spanish 'aguacate' adapted the Nahuatl 'ahuacatl', which English then reshaped into 'avocado'.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'muscle' comes from the Latin 'musculus', literally 'little mouse', from the way a flexing muscle seemed to ripple like a small animal.
  TRUE. Romans thought a moving muscle under the skin resembled a scurrying mouse.
Round 9 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 10 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  A dolphin sleeps with one half of its brain at a time, keeping one eye open and surfacing to breathe.
  TRUE. This 'unihemispheric' sleep lets it rest while staying alert enough to surface for air.
- ✓ TRUE
  Dolphins use signature whistles that act like individual names, identifying themselves and calling to specific others.
  TRUE. Each dolphin develops a personal whistle others use to address it.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Dolphins are fish and breathe underwater through gills, like other marine animals.
  FALSE. Dolphins are air-breathing mammals that must surface to breathe through a blowhole, not gills.

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