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 #0087

Sep 16, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

Round 1 ANIMALS
- ✗ FABRICATION
  A goldfish has a memory span of only about three seconds, so it experiences its bowl as brand new on every lap.
  FALSE. Goldfish remember for weeks or months and can be trained to respond to cues, times and simple tasks.
- ✓ TRUE
  Goldfish can be taught to recognise feeding times and to nudge a lever or target to earn food.
  TRUE. Goldfish learn feeding schedules and can be trained with simple lever or colour tasks.
- ✓ TRUE
  Goldfish belong to the carp family and, cared for well, can live for well over a decade.
  TRUE. Goldfish are cyprinids (carp relatives) and routinely live 10-15 years or more in good conditions.
Round 2 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  Johannes Gutenberg popularized printing with movable metal type in Europe around the 1450s, transforming how books were made.
  TRUE — his press made mass book production feasible and helped spark the print revolution.
- ✓ TRUE
  Gutenberg's most celebrated printed work was an edition of the Bible produced in the 1450s.
  TRUE — the Gutenberg Bible is among the earliest major books printed with movable type in Europe.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Movable-type printing was unknown anywhere in Asia until European traders introduced Gutenberg's press in the 1500s.
  FALSE — movable type existed in China by the 11th century and metal type in Korea before Gutenberg was even born.
Round 3 FOOD
- ✓ TRUE
  The croissant's crescent shape is often linked to Vienna's kipferl pastry rather than to an original French invention.
  TRUE. The crescent kipferl is a Viennese ancestor; the croissant is part of 'viennoiserie,' pastries in the Vienna style.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The modern flaky, laminated butter croissant appears in French bakery guild records dating to the 1600s.
  FALSE. The laminated yeast-dough croissant is an early-20th-century development; no 1600s French guild recipe describes it.
- ✓ TRUE
  Layering dough with sheets of butter, called lamination, is what gives the croissant its flaky texture.
  TRUE. Rolling and folding butter into dough creates many thin layers that steam apart into flakes when baked.
Round 4 ANIMALS
- ✓ TRUE
  Hummingbirds can hover in place and are the only birds capable of sustained backward flight.
  TRUE — their figure-eight wingstroke generates lift on both the forward and backward sweep, enabling true backward flight.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Tiny hummingbirds survive long migrations by riding on the backs of larger geese for part of the journey.
  FALSE — this is an old folk myth; hummingbirds fly entirely under their own power, and ruby-throated ones cross the Gulf of Mexico nonstop.
- ✓ TRUE
  A hummingbird's heart can beat more than 1,000 times per minute during vigorous activity.
  TRUE — heart rates well over 1,000 beats per minute support their extreme metabolism.
Round 5 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  The Titanic sank in April 1912 after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic during its very first voyage.
  TRUE — the ship went down on its maiden voyage from Southampton toward New York.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The Titanic actually carried enough lifeboats for everyone aboard, but panic stopped most of them from being launched.
  FALSE — the Titanic carried lifeboats for only about half those aboard, a shortfall that worsened the death toll.
- ✓ TRUE
  The wreck of the Titanic lay undiscovered on the ocean floor until an expedition located it in 1985.
  TRUE — a team led by Robert Ballard found the wreck deep in the Atlantic in 1985.
Round 6 SPACE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is so tightly packed that spacecraft must carefully weave through to avoid collisions.
  FALSE. The belt is mostly empty space; probes fly through it routinely with essentially no risk of hitting anything.
- ✓ TRUE
  Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, is officially classified as a dwarf planet.
  TRUE. Big enough to be rounded by its own gravity, Ceres shares the dwarf planet label with Pluto.
- ✓ TRUE
  Most of the total mass of the asteroid belt is concentrated in just a handful of its largest bodies.
  TRUE. A few big objects like Ceres and Vesta account for a large share of the belt's mass.
Round 7 SPACE
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Saturn is the only planet in the solar system that has a ring system around it.
  FALSE. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune all have rings too; Saturn's are just far brighter and easier to see.
- ✓ TRUE
  Saturn's average density is so low that, given a big enough ocean, the planet would float in water.
  TRUE. Saturn's mean density is less than that of water, the only planet for which this is the case.
- ✓ TRUE
  Saturn's moon Titan has surface lakes and rivers filled with liquid methane and ethane instead of water.
  TRUE. Titan is the only other world known to have stable liquid on its surface, though it's hydrocarbons.
Round 8 SPACE
- ✓ TRUE
  The Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth and has been returning astronomical observations since 1990.
  TRUE. Launched aboard the shuttle in 1990, it has been serviced by astronauts and still operates.
- ✓ TRUE
  A light-year measures distance, not time — specifically how far light travels over the course of one year.
  TRUE. Despite the word 'year,' it's a unit of distance, roughly 9.5 trillion kilometers.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun at about four light-years, is bright enough to spot with the naked eye.
  FALSE. Proxima Centauri is a dim red dwarf, far too faint to see without a telescope despite being closest.
Round 9 HISTORY
- ✓ TRUE
  The Maya civilization developed a full writing system and strikingly accurate calendars across Mesoamerica.
  TRUE — Maya scribes recorded history in glyphs and tracked astronomical cycles precisely.
- ✓ TRUE
  Maya cities such as Tikal featured towering stone pyramids, temples, and palaces rising above the forest.
  TRUE — Tikal's stepped pyramids still loom over the Guatemalan jungle.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  The ancient Maya predicted the world would end in 2012, which is exactly why their long calendar simply stops there.
  FALSE — the Maya predicted no apocalypse; 2012 merely closed one long-count cycle, and the calendar rolls onward.
Round 10 NATURE
- ✓ TRUE
  Some bamboo species can grow nearly a metre in a single day, making them among the fastest-growing plants on Earth.
  TRUE. Certain species set growth records of close to a metre per day under ideal conditions.
- ✓ TRUE
  Bamboo is technically a grass, closely related to wheat, rice and lawn grasses.
  TRUE. Despite its woody, tree-like size, bamboo belongs to the grass family Poaceae.
- ✗ FABRICATION
  Bamboo flowers and produces seeds every single year, just like most common garden plants.
  FALSE. Many bamboo species flower only once every several decades, sometimes in synchronised events across entire regions.

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