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 #0083

Sep 12, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Water is one of the few substances that expands when it freezes, which is why ice floats.
  TRUE. Water is densest as a liquid at about 4 degrees Celsius, and ice is less dense than liquid water.
- ✓ TRUE
  Because ice floats, it forms an insulating layer on top of a lake, allowing fish and other life to survive the winter below.
  TRUE. The floating ice layer slows further freezing and keeps the water beneath liquid.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Water is most dense as ice, which is why the coldest layer in a frozen pond sinks to the very bottom.
  FALSE. Water is densest as a liquid at around 4 degrees Celsius; ice is less dense and stays on top.
Round 2 LANGUAGE
- ✓ TRUE
  Finnish and Hungarian belong to the same language family and are not part of the large group that includes English, French and Russian.
  TRUE. Both are Uralic (Finno-Ugric), unrelated to the Indo-European languages around them.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'assassin' is generally traced to an Arabic term historically linked to a medieval sect in the Middle East.
  TRUE. It goes back to 'hashishin', a name applied to members of that sect, then borrowed into European languages.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'pumpernickel' comes from Napoleon, who tasted the dark bread and called it 'pain pour Nicole', naming it after his horse Nicole.
  FALSE. That is a popular folk tale; 'pumpernickel' is German, combining a word for breaking wind with 'Nickel', a jibe at the coarse, hard-to-digest bread.
Round 3 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 4 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.
Round 5 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  The Rosetta Stone records one decree carved in three scripts, and comparing them let scholars finally decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
  TRUE — the Greek text was the key that unlocked the hieroglyphic and Demotic versions.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Napoleon Bonaparte was famously tiny for his era, standing only about five feet tall by the time he died.
  FALSE — Napoleon stood roughly 5'6"–5'7", average for his day; the 'short' myth came from confusing French and English inches.
- ✓ TRUE
  Napoleon placed the crown on his own head when he was made Emperor of the French in 1804 at Notre-Dame.
  TRUE — he crowned himself rather than let the Pope do it, a deliberate statement of his own authority.
Round 6 FOOD
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'ketchup' comes from a Nahuatl term the Aztecs used for a spiced tomato relish served at feasts.
  FALSE. 'Ketchup' traces to the Hokkien Chinese word ke-tsiap, a fermented fish and brine sauce, with no Aztec or tomato connection.
- ✓ TRUE
  Some early English ketchup recipes were built around mushrooms or walnuts rather than tomatoes.
  TRUE. 18th- and 19th-century England knew mushroom and walnut ketchups; tomato was just one of many 'ketchup' bases.
- ✓ TRUE
  The sauce's Southeast Asian ancestor was a fermented fish preparation, not a tomato product.
  TRUE. The original was a salty fermented fish/seafood sauce; sweet tomato ketchup is a later Western reinvention.
Round 7 GEOGRAPHY
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Australia's capital is Sydney, its most populous city and the home of the famous harbourside Opera House.
  FALSE. Australia's capital is Canberra. Sydney is the biggest city, but it has never been the capital.
- ✓ TRUE
  Canberra was purpose-built as Australia's capital, a compromise to settle the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne.
  TRUE. Neither big city would yield, so a brand-new capital was planned between them.
- ✓ TRUE
  Sydney is Australia's most populous city, with a population well above four million people.
  TRUE. Sydney is Australia's largest city by population, even though it isn't the capital.
Round 8 GEOGRAPHY
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Dead Sea is the largest inland body of saltwater on Earth, exceeding even the Caspian Sea in area.
  FALSE. The Caspian Sea is by far the largest inland body of water; the Dead Sea is comparatively tiny.
- ✓ TRUE
  The shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest exposed land on Earth, sitting over 400 metres below sea level.
  TRUE. The Dead Sea shoreline is the lowest dry land on the planet, roughly 430 m below sea level.
- ✓ TRUE
  The Pacific is both the largest and the deepest of Earth's oceans.
  TRUE. The Pacific is the biggest ocean and contains the deepest known point, the Mariana Trench.
Round 9 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 10 SPACE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, transmitted live television pictures of Earth back to the Soviet Union.
  FALSE. Sputnik 1 only broadcast simple radio beeps; it carried no camera or television equipment.
- ✓ TRUE
  Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, was a metal sphere roughly the size of a beach ball.
  TRUE. The polished sphere was about 58 centimeters across and kicked off the space age.
- ✓ TRUE
  A dog named Laika, aboard Sputnik 2, became one of the first living creatures to orbit the Earth.
  TRUE. Laika launched in 1957, an early and famous animal passenger of the space race.

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