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 #0079

Sep 8, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 LANGUAGE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'tip', meaning a gratuity, began as an acronym for 'To Insure Promptness' printed on jars in old English coffeehouses.
  FALSE. 'Tip' predates that story and is not an acronym; the 'To Insure Promptness' tale was invented long after the word was in use.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'gymnasium' derives from a Greek word connected to exercising naked, which was customary for athletes in ancient training grounds.
  TRUE. The Greek 'gymnos' means naked, and athletes trained without clothing.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'companion' breaks down into Latin roots meaning 'with' and 'bread' — literally, someone you share bread with.
  TRUE. It joins 'com-' (with) and 'panis' (bread), the idea of a messmate.
Round 2 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  An octopus has three hearts: two pump blood through the gills while a third drives it around the rest of the body.
  TRUE — and the body heart pauses whenever the octopus swims, which tires it out and is why it often prefers to crawl.
- ✓ TRUE
  Octopus blood is blue because it carries oxygen using a copper-based protein called hemocyanin rather than iron-based hemoglobin.
  TRUE — copper turns the oxygen-carrying protein blue, which works better than iron in cold, low-oxygen water.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Octopuses are likely colorblind, yet each sucker holds a tiny lens that focuses light, acting as a backup eye.
  FALSE — suckers carry chemical and touch sensors, not lenses or eyes. Octopuses are probably colorblind, but they don't 'see' with their arms.
Round 3 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  Sourdough bread rises using wild yeast and bacteria naturally present in a flour-and-water starter.
  TRUE. A sourdough starter cultures wild yeast and lactic bacteria that leaven the dough and add tang.
- ✓ TRUE
  Ancient Egyptians are commonly credited with advancing leavened bread thousands of years ago.
  TRUE. Egypt is widely associated with early progress in raised, leavened bread and its baking.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  French law dating to the reign of Louis XIV requires every baguette to be exactly 65 centimeters long.
  FALSE. No such Louis XIV law exists; the modern baguette is a 20th-century form, and its size is convention, not royal decree.
Round 4 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  Chili peppers are native to the Americas and spread across the rest of the world after transatlantic contact.
  TRUE. Chilies originated in the Americas and only reached Asia, Africa, and Europe after 15th-century contact.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The heat of a chili pepper comes from capsaicin, which is concentrated mainly in the seeds themselves.
  FALSE. Capsaicin is concentrated in the pale inner membrane (the placenta), not the seeds; seeds just sit near it.
- ✓ TRUE
  Capsaicin binds to receptors that also respond to heat, which is part of why spicy food can feel 'hot.'
  TRUE. Capsaicin activates heat-sensing receptors, so the brain interprets spice as a burning, hot sensation.
Round 5 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  Cacao was consumed as a bitter, often frothy drink in Mesoamerica long before sweetened chocolate existed.
  TRUE. Mesoamerican peoples drank spiced, unsweetened, frothed cacao; sugar-sweetened chocolate came after European contact.
- ✓ TRUE
  Solid eating chocolate as we know it emerged in the 19th century after ways to work with cocoa butter developed.
  TRUE. Advances in pressing and recombining cocoa butter in the 1800s made moldable eating chocolate possible.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  White chocolate counts as true chocolate because it contains roasted cocoa solids just like dark chocolate.
  FALSE. White chocolate contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids, which is why it lacks the brown color and 'chocolatey' taste.
Round 6 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 7 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  The blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever lived, outweighing every dinosaur on record.
  TRUE. At up to about 180 tonnes, the blue whale exceeds any known dinosaur in mass.
- ✓ TRUE
  A blue whale's heart is roughly the size of a small car, and its tongue alone can weigh about as much as an elephant.
  TRUE. The heart weighs hundreds of kilograms, and the tongue's mass approaches that of an elephant.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Blue whales hunt by chasing down and swallowing large fish and seals, using bursts of speed to catch them.
  FALSE. They are filter feeders that engulf huge mouthfuls of water and strain out tiny krill with baleen.
Round 8 SPACE
- ✓ TRUE
  Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a colossal storm that has been observed raging for at least a couple of centuries.
  TRUE. This anticyclone is wide enough to swallow Earth and has persisted through generations of observation.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Jupiter has exactly four moons, all of them discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610.
  FALSE. Galileo found the four largest moons, but Jupiter is now known to have dozens more, over ninety in total.
- ✓ TRUE
  Jupiter is so massive that the balance point it shares with the Sun lies just outside the Sun's surface.
  TRUE. The Sun and Jupiter orbit a common center of mass that sits slightly above the Sun's visible edge.
Round 9 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Bats are the only mammals capable of sustained, powered flight rather than just gliding.
  TRUE. Other 'flying' mammals such as flying squirrels only glide; bats flap and truly fly.
- ✓ TRUE
  Many bats navigate and hunt in darkness by emitting high-frequency calls and reading the returning echoes.
  TRUE. This echolocation lets them detect and chase insects in total darkness.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Bats are completely blind, and their eyes contain no light-sensing cells at all.
  FALSE. All bats can see, and many fruit bats have large eyes with excellent vision; they are not blind.
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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