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 #0085

Sep 14, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  A flame's color hints at its temperature, with blue flames generally hotter than orange or yellow ones.
  TRUE. Bluer flames indicate more complete, hotter combustion than yellow-orange ones.
- ✓ TRUE
  Fire needs three things at once: oxygen, fuel, and heat, and removing any one will put it out.
  TRUE. This is the fire triangle; take away any side and combustion stops.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Water extinguishes fire mainly by being heavier than the flames and physically pushing them downward.
  FALSE. Water works by cooling the fuel below ignition and by steam crowding out oxygen, not by weight.
Round 2 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  The platypus is one of the very few mammals that lays eggs instead of giving birth to live young.
  TRUE. Along with echidnas, it is a monotreme — an egg-laying mammal.
- ✓ TRUE
  The male platypus has a venomous spur on each hind leg, a rare feature among mammals.
  TRUE. The spur delivers a painful venom, mostly used in fights with rival males.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A platypus's bill is a hard beak of solid bone, like a bird's, which it uses to crack open nuts.
  FALSE. The bill is soft, rubbery and leathery, packed with electroreceptors that detect the muscle movements of prey, not a bone nutcracker.
Round 3 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Flamingos hatch grey-white and only turn pink over time from pigments in the algae and tiny crustaceans they eat.
  TRUE — carotenoid pigments in their food dye the feathers pink; a flamingo fed a plain diet fades toward white.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A flamingo can balance on one leg for only a few minutes before muscle fatigue forces it to switch legs.
  FALSE — the one-legged stance is the low-effort, near-passive posture; flamingos hold it effortlessly, even while asleep.
- ✓ TRUE
  Flamingos feed with their heads upside down, using comb-like structures in the bill to filter small food from the water.
  TRUE — the bill works as a strainer while held inverted, sieving out algae and shrimp-like prey.
Round 4 LANGUAGE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The word 'sincere' comes from the Latin 'sine cera', meaning 'without wax', from honest sculptors who refused to hide cracks in marble with wax filler.
  FALSE. 'Sincere' comes from Latin 'sincerus' (clean, pure, whole); the charming 'without wax' sculptor story is a well-known folk etymology with no support.
- ✓ TRUE
  The English word 'salary' derives from the Latin 'salarium', a term connected to salt and to allowances paid to Roman soldiers.
  TRUE. Salarium linked to 'sal' (salt); the Romans tied pay to this word, which is where 'worth your salt' feeling comes from.
- ✓ TRUE
  The word 'ketchup' most likely traces back through Malay to a Hokkien Chinese term for a fermented fish or seafood sauce.
  TRUE. The original sauce was nothing like the tomato version; the fish-sauce ancestor travelled via Southeast Asian trade into English.
Round 5 SCIENCE
- ✓ TRUE
  Sound travels roughly four times faster in water than it does in air.
  TRUE. Water's tighter molecular packing carries vibrations far quicker than air does.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Sound cannot pass through solid steel, because its tightly packed atoms block the vibrations entirely.
  FALSE. Sound travels through steel even faster than through air, at several kilometers per second.
- ✓ TRUE
  In the vacuum of space, sound cannot travel because there are no molecules to carry the vibrations.
  TRUE. Sound needs a medium; with no particles to pass the vibration along, space is silent.
Round 6 GEOGRAPHY
- ✓ TRUE
  Greenland is the world's largest island, though Australia is counted as a continent rather than an island.
  TRUE. By area, Greenland is the largest island; Australia is classed as a continent.
- ✓ TRUE
  If Greenland's ice sheet melted completely, global sea levels would rise by roughly seven metres.
  TRUE. The ice sheet holds enough water to raise oceans by about seven metres.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Greenland was named for its lush, green interior, which early explorers found covered in forests.
  FALSE. Its interior is almost entirely ice; the name is traditionally credited to Erik the Red's bid to attract settlers.
Round 7 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  A praying mantis is the only insect known to be able to turn its head and look over its shoulder.
  TRUE. Its flexible neck joint lets it swivel its triangular head far to the side to track movement.
- ✓ TRUE
  A female praying mantis sometimes eats the male during or after mating.
  TRUE. Sexual cannibalism occurs in some mantis species, though it is not universal.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A praying mantis has ears on its head that let it hear birdsong from hundreds of metres away.
  FALSE. Most mantises have a single ear on the underside of the thorax, tuned mainly to the ultrasound of hunting bats, not birdsong.
Round 8 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 9 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  Black tea and green tea come from the same plant, differing mainly in how the leaves are processed and oxidized.
  TRUE. Both come from Camellia sinensis; oxidation level during processing is what separates green from black.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Herbal 'teas' such as chamomile are made from Camellia sinensis leaves harvested before they develop caffeine.
  FALSE. Herbal infusions come from other plants entirely, not from the tea plant, and are more properly called tisanes.
- ✓ TRUE
  Oolong tea is partially oxidized, sitting between green tea and black tea in its processing.
  TRUE. Oolong's partial oxidation places it in flavor and color between unoxidized green and fully oxidized black tea.
Round 10 SPACE
- ✓ TRUE
  The Sun contains roughly 99.8 percent of all the mass in the entire solar system.
  TRUE. Everything else, all planets and moons combined, makes up only a tiny fraction of the total.
- ✓ TRUE
  Light leaving the Sun takes about eight minutes to travel across space and reach the Earth.
  TRUE. So the sunlight you see actually left the Sun roughly eight minutes earlier.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Sun is classified as a red giant and currently generates its energy by fusing helium in its core.
  FALSE. The Sun is a yellow dwarf fusing hydrogen; it won't become a red giant for billions of years.

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