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 #0074

Sep 3, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  In written Spanish, questions and exclamations are marked at both ends of the sentence, with an inverted mark at the start and an upright one at the close.
  TRUE. The opening inverted marks signal the sentence type before you read it.
- ✓ TRUE
  Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, so one syllable can carry entirely different meanings depending on the pitch pattern used to say it.
  TRUE. Standard Mandarin has four main tones plus a neutral one, and tone changes meaning.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'alphabet' was built by combining the names of the first two letters of the Latin alphabet, 'a' and 'b'.
  FALSE. It comes from 'alpha' and 'beta', the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, not Latin ones.
Round 2 LANGUAGE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'gospel' comes from an Old English term meaning 'God's spell', that is, a divine incantation or magic saying.
  FALSE. It comes from Old English 'godspel' meaning 'good news' (god 'good' + spel 'story'), a translation of the Greek for good tidings, not 'God's spell'.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'clue' comes from 'clew', meaning a ball of thread, echoing the thread a hero unwound to find his way out of a labyrinth.
  TRUE. Following a thread to solve a maze gave 'clew/clue' its sense of something that guides you to a solution.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'malaria' comes from an Italian phrase meaning 'bad air', from the belief that the disease rose from foul marsh vapours.
  TRUE. Before mosquitoes were understood, people blamed swampy 'bad air' for the fever.
Round 3 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  The potato was domesticated in the Andes region of South America thousands of years ago.
  TRUE. Andean peoples domesticated the potato millennia ago, developing many varieties suited to high altitudes.
- ✓ TRUE
  Potatoes reached Europe in the 16th century and were initially met with suspicion in some regions.
  TRUE. After arriving from the Americas, potatoes were long distrusted in parts of Europe before becoming a staple.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Sweet potatoes and regular potatoes are closely related and belong to the very same plant family.
  FALSE. They are not close relatives: the potato is a nightshade, while the sweet potato is in the morning-glory family.
Round 4 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  Antarctica is the largest desert on Earth, because a desert is defined by low precipitation rather than heat.
  TRUE. It receives so little precipitation that, by that definition, it qualifies as a polar desert.
- ✓ TRUE
  Antarctica's ice sheet holds a majority of the world's fresh water, far more than all rivers and lakes.
  TRUE. Roughly 60 to 70 percent of Earth's fresh water is locked in the Antarctic ice sheet.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Antarctica is the smallest continent, covering less area than Australia.
  FALSE. Australia is the smallest continent; Antarctica is roughly twice its size.
Round 5 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  A firefly's light is produced by a chemical reaction that gives off almost no heat, making it one of the most efficient lights known.
  TRUE. Unlike a light bulb, nearly all the energy becomes light rather than heat.
- ✓ TRUE
  Each firefly species flashes in its own distinctive pattern, helping males and females of the same species find one another.
  TRUE. Flash patterns are species-specific mating signals.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A firefly's glow is produced by friction as it rubs its wings together, much like striking a match.
  FALSE. The light comes from a chemical reaction (luciferin and luciferase) in its abdomen, not friction.
Round 6 SPACE
- ✓ TRUE
  A neutron star can cram more mass than the entire Sun into a sphere only about 20 kilometers wide.
  TRUE. These collapsed stellar cores are among the densest objects in the universe.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A single teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh about as much as a car does here on Earth.
  FALSE. A teaspoon would weigh billions of tonnes, not a car's worth — neutron star matter is almost unimaginably dense.
- ✓ TRUE
  Some neutron stars, called pulsars, spin hundreds of times per second while sweeping beams of radiation like a lighthouse.
  TRUE. Their beams flash past our line of sight so regularly they were once mistaken for alien signals.
Round 7 HISTORY
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The pyramids at Giza were originally sheathed in a smooth layer of gold plating that was later stripped away by looters.
  FALSE — the pyramids were cased in polished white limestone, not gold; the casing stones were reused for other buildings.
- ✓ TRUE
  The Great Pyramid of Giza remained the tallest human-made structure on Earth for thousands of years.
  TRUE — it held the record until medieval cathedrals finally rose higher.
- ✓ TRUE
  The Great Pyramid was built as a monumental tomb for the pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty.
  TRUE — it was raised as Khufu's royal tomb during Egypt's Old Kingdom.
Round 8 GEOGRAPHY
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Africa is the largest continent on Earth by total land area.
  FALSE. Asia is the largest continent by area; Africa ranks second.
- ✓ TRUE
  Asia is both the largest continent by area and the most populous.
  TRUE. Asia leads the world in both land area and population.
- ✓ TRUE
  Africa is the second-largest continent by land area.
  TRUE. Africa ranks second in size, after Asia.
Round 9 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  An owl can rotate its head about 270 degrees, more than three-quarters of a full turn.
  TRUE. Extra neck vertebrae and specially adapted blood vessels let it turn far beyond what a human neck allows.
- ✓ TRUE
  An owl's eyes are fixed in their sockets, so it must turn its whole head to look around.
  TRUE. Owls cannot roll their eyes side to side, which is why they swivel their heads instead.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Owls have eyes powerful enough to see clearly in complete, pitch-black darkness.
  FALSE. Owls see very well in low light but, like every eye, still need some light; they cannot see in total darkness.
Round 10 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  The everyday word 'goodbye' began as a contraction of the parting phrase 'God be with ye'.
  TRUE. Repeated shortening of 'God be with ye' produced 'godbwye' and eventually 'goodbye'.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'taxi' comes from the Greek word 'taxidi', meaning 'journey', chosen because the vehicles carried travellers from place to place.
  FALSE. 'Taxi' is short for 'taximeter cab'; the taximeter is named from a fare-charge root plus Greek 'metron' (measure), not from 'taxidi'.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'sandwich' comes from the title of an 18th-century English earl, associated with the habit of eating meat between slices of bread.
  TRUE. The food is named after the Earl of Sandwich, a title dating to the 1600s.

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