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 #0072

Sep 1, 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 lightning bolt can heat the air around it to about 30,000 degrees Celsius, several times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
  TRUE. The air along the channel is heated to tens of thousands of degrees in a fraction of a second.
- ✓ TRUE
  Lightning can strike the same place more than once, and tall structures are hit repeatedly.
  TRUE. The Empire State Building and other tall landmarks are struck many times a year.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Thunder is the sound of the lightning bolt striking the ground and splitting the earth.
  FALSE. Thunder is the shockwave of air rapidly expanding after being superheated by the bolt, not the sound of an impact.
Round 2 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 3 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Honey recovered from ancient Egyptian tombs was still edible thousands of years later, thanks to its low moisture and natural acidity.
  TRUE. Honey's low water content and acidity choke out microbes, so sealed honey can last practically forever.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Honey never freezes or hardens even far below zero, because its dissolved sugars prevent any crystal structure from forming.
  FALSE. Honey actually crystallizes and stiffens over time; cold speeds up the sugar granulation rather than preventing it.
- ✓ TRUE
  At a specific low pressure called the triple point, water can boil and freeze at the same time.
  TRUE. At the triple point, water's solid, liquid, and gas phases coexist in equilibrium.
Round 4 SPACE
- ✓ TRUE
  The Moon is gradually drifting farther from Earth, moving away by a few centimeters every year.
  TRUE. Tidal interactions push it outward at roughly the rate your fingernails grow.
- ✓ TRUE
  The same side of the Moon always faces Earth because it turns once on its axis for each orbit it makes.
  TRUE. This tidal locking keeps the far side hidden from Earth-based viewers.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Moon has no gravity of its own, which is why the Apollo astronauts floated rather than walked on it.
  FALSE. The Moon has about one-sixth of Earth's gravity; astronauts bounced and walked, they did not float.
Round 5 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  Johannes Gutenberg popularized printing with movable metal type in Europe around the 1450s, transforming how books were made.
  TRUE — his press made mass book production feasible and helped spark the print revolution.
- ✓ TRUE
  Gutenberg's most celebrated printed work was an edition of the Bible produced in the 1450s.
  TRUE — the Gutenberg Bible is among the earliest major books printed with movable type in Europe.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Movable-type printing was unknown anywhere in Asia until European traders introduced Gutenberg's press in the 1500s.
  FALSE — movable type existed in China by the 11th century and metal type in Korea before Gutenberg was even born.
Round 6 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  'Quarantine' comes from the Italian 'quaranta giorni', meaning 'forty days', the isolation period imposed on arriving ships in Venice.
  TRUE. Venetian authorities held suspect ships forty days before landing, and the count itself named the practice.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'posh' is an acronym for 'Port Out, Starboard Home', marking the shaded, cooler cabins wealthy passengers booked on voyages to India.
  FALSE. There is no evidence for the 'Port Out Starboard Home' story; 'posh' has no confirmed acronymic origin and the tale was invented later.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'robot' entered English from Czech, coined for a 1920 play, from a term relating to forced labour or drudgery.
  TRUE. It comes from Karel Capek's play R.U.R.; the Czech root 'robota' means compulsory labour.
Round 7 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Glass is made mainly from sand, which is melted at very high temperatures into a clear solid.
  TRUE. Silica sand is the primary ingredient, melted and cooled into glass.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Bulletproof glass is really just one extremely thick pane of specially hardened crystal.
  FALSE. It's actually layers of glass bonded with tough plastic like polycarbonate, which absorb and spread the impact.
- ✓ TRUE
  Tempered glass breaks into small blunt pieces instead of sharp shards, due to internal stress from rapid cooling.
  TRUE. Quick cooling locks in stresses that make the glass crumble into pebbles when it fails.
Round 8 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth and is visible from space.
  TRUE. Stretching thousands of kilometres, it is built by living organisms and can be seen from orbit.
- ✓ TRUE
  Coral reefs are built by tiny animals called polyps that secrete hard calcium carbonate skeletons.
  TRUE. Billions of polyps lay down limestone skeletons that form the reef structure.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Great Barrier Reef is a single enormous living organism, one connected creature thousands of kilometres long.
  FALSE. It is a vast collection of billions of individual coral polyps across many separate colonies, not one organism.
Round 9 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Ice floats because water is unusual: it expands and grows less dense when it freezes.
  TRUE. Water's crystal structure spreads molecules apart, so ice is lighter than liquid water.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Coriolis effect decides which way water swirls down your bathroom drain in each hemisphere.
  FALSE. At a sink's scale the Coriolis force is far too weak; basin shape and initial motion decide the swirl.
- ✓ TRUE
  Salt lowers the freezing point of water, which is why it's scattered on icy roads in winter.
  TRUE. Dissolved salt makes water freeze at a lower temperature, helping melt road ice.
Round 10 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  There is evidence of pasta-like foods in Italy before Marco Polo's travels, undercutting the story that he introduced it.
  TRUE. Records show pasta in Italy predating Marco Polo, so he could not have brought the first noodles home.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Marco Polo brought the first noodles to Italy from China, which is why Italians began making pasta.
  FALSE. This is a popular myth; pasta already existed in Italy before Marco Polo's journey to Asia.
- ✓ TRUE
  Dried durum-wheat pasta was being produced in medieval Sicily, helping it spread around the Mediterranean.
  TRUE. Medieval Sicily was an early hub of dried pasta production, aiding trade and its wider spread.

← All past cases