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 #0077

Sep 6, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Tardigrades can survive being dried out for years by shriveling into a dormant, barrel-shaped state called a tun.
  TRUE — in the tun state their metabolism nearly stops, letting them wait out drought until water returns.
- ✓ TRUE
  Tardigrades have survived direct exposure to the vacuum and radiation of open space.
  TRUE — in a 2007 orbital experiment, some tardigrades exposed to space vacuum and radiation survived and later reproduced.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Tardigrades are the largest animals able to enter cryptobiosis, reaching up to five centimeters in length.
  FALSE — tardigrades are microscopic, typically around half a millimeter long; you generally need a microscope to see them.
Round 2 ANIMALS
- ✗ FABRICATION
  An elephant's trunk contains a single long bone that lets it lift heavy logs.
  FALSE — the trunk has no bones at all; it's a boneless structure built from tens of thousands of muscle units.
- ✓ TRUE
  Elephants can communicate across long distances using low-frequency rumbles, some too deep for humans to hear.
  TRUE — these infrasonic rumbles can travel for kilometers and coordinate distant herds.
- ✓ TRUE
  Elephants can pick up ground vibrations through their feet, helping them sense distant events.
  TRUE — they detect seismic waves through sensitive feet and can respond to vibrations from far away.
Round 3 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 4 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  The ocean generates a large share of Earth's oxygen, much of it produced by photosynthesizing plankton near the surface.
  TRUE — marine phytoplankton are estimated to produce roughly half of the planet's oxygen.
- ✓ TRUE
  Sound travels several times faster through water than through air.
  TRUE — sound moves about 1,500 m/s in seawater versus about 340 m/s in air, roughly four times faster.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Mariana Trench is so deep that sunlight only reaches its bottom around midday.
  FALSE — no sunlight reaches the bottom at all; light fades out within the first kilometer, and the trench floor lies near 11 km down in total darkness.
Round 5 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  A cuttlefish can change its skin colour, pattern and even texture in under a second.
  TRUE. Specialised pigment cells and skin muscles let it shift appearance almost instantly.
- ✓ TRUE
  Inside a cuttlefish is a porous internal shell, the cuttlebone, which helps it control buoyancy and is often given to pet birds.
  TRUE. The gas-and-mineral cuttlebone acts as a buoyancy aid and a calcium supplement for caged birds.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Cuttlefish are true fish, belonging to the same vertebrate group as sharks and rays.
  FALSE. Despite the name, they are not fish at all — they are cephalopods, marine molluscs related to octopus and squid.
Round 6 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 7 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 8 LANGUAGE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'butterfly' was originally 'flutterby', and its two parts were swapped over the centuries through common mispronunciation.
  FALSE. The historical form is 'butterfly' (Old English buttorfleoge); 'flutterby' is a modern playful reversal, not the original.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'lord' descends from an Old English compound meaning roughly 'loaf-keeper' or guardian of the bread.
  TRUE. 'Hlafweard' (loaf-ward) contracted over time into 'lord'.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'window' comes from an Old Norse compound literally meaning 'wind-eye'.
  TRUE. Early openings let in air and light, so they were called a 'wind-eye'.
Round 9 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest freshwater lake in the world.
  TRUE. Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake, plunging over 1,600 metres.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Lake Victoria in Africa is the deepest lake on Earth, dropping more than 1,600 metres at its centre.
  FALSE. Lake Victoria is quite shallow (around 80 m); Baikal is the deepest lake, not Victoria.
- ✓ TRUE
  Lake Baikal holds roughly a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh surface water.
  TRUE. Baikal alone contains about 20% of Earth's unfrozen fresh surface water.
Round 10 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.

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