Case File #0063

Aug 23, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

  1. Round 1 ANIMALS
    • ✓ TRUE

      Sharks have existed longer than trees have grown on land.

      TRUE — early sharks appeared over 400 million years ago, before the first true forests spread across land.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Sharks can sense the faint electric fields of nearby prey using jelly-filled pores called the ampullae of Lorenzini.

      TRUE — these electroreceptors detect the tiny electrical signals given off by living muscle, even in murky water.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      A shark's skeleton is made of lightweight hollow bones, like a bird's, to help it stay buoyant.

      FALSE — sharks have no bones at all; their skeleton is made of flexible, lighter-than-bone cartilage.

  2. Round 2 FOOD
    • ✓ TRUE

      Vanilla is derived from the cured seed pods of orchids and was first cultivated in Mesoamerica.

      TRUE. The vanilla 'bean' is an orchid pod, and its cultivation began among Mesoamerican peoples.

    • ✓ TRUE

      For a long time vanilla was hard to grow outside its native range because it depended on specific pollinators.

      TRUE. Without its native pollinators, vanilla set little fruit abroad until hand-pollination was developed.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Vanilla flavor comes from the seeds of a desert cactus native to the American Southwest.

      FALSE. Vanilla comes from the cured seed pods of orchids native to Mesoamerica, not from any cactus.

  3. Round 3 SCIENCE
    • ✓ TRUE

      A battery makes electricity through chemical reactions that push electrons from one terminal to the other.

      TRUE. Chemical reactions at the electrodes drive electrons through the external circuit.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Rechargeable batteries work by using an external current to reverse the chemical reaction inside them.

      TRUE. Charging forces the reaction backward, restoring the battery to its energized state.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Batteries go dead in the cold because low temperatures crack the internal metal plates.

      FALSE. Cold simply slows the chemical reactions inside, cutting output; the plates don't crack.

  4. Round 4 SPACE
    • ✓ TRUE

      Halley's Comet becomes visible from Earth roughly every 76 years, with its most recent appearance in 1986.

      TRUE. Its next return is expected around 2061, keeping to its long, predictable cycle.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      A comet's tail always trails directly behind it along its path, streaming back like a rocket's exhaust.

      FALSE. A comet's tail points away from the Sun, driven by solar wind and radiation, even when the comet is moving away.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Comets are often nicknamed 'dirty snowballs' because they are made largely of ice mixed with dust and rock.

      TRUE. As they near the Sun the ice vaporizes, releasing the gas and dust that form their glowing tails.

  5. 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.

  6. Round 6 HISTORY
    • ✗ 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.

    • ✓ 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.

  7. Round 7 GEOGRAPHY
    • ✗ FABRICATION

      The Equator passes through the southern tip of India near the town of Kanyakumari.

      FALSE. The Equator does not reach India; the country's southern tip lies around eight degrees north of it.

    • ✓ TRUE

      The Equator passes through Ecuador, a country whose name is Spanish for "equator."

      TRUE. Ecuador is named for the Equator, which runs through the country.

    • ✓ TRUE

      The Equator crosses through parts of Brazil, including areas near the mouth of the Amazon.

      TRUE. The Equator runs across northern Brazil, near where the Amazon meets the sea.

  8. Round 8 FOOD
    • ✓ TRUE

      The Maillard reaction is a reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that produces browning and new flavors.

      TRUE. This heat-driven reaction creates the savory flavors and brown color of roasted, seared, and baked foods.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Caramelization involves the breakdown of sugars alone and generally begins at higher temperatures than many Maillard reactions.

      TRUE. Caramelization is pure sugar breakdown and typically needs higher heat than protein-plus-sugar browning.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      The browning of a seared steak is caused mainly by caramelization of the meat's own natural sugars.

      FALSE. Meat browning is mostly the Maillard reaction between amino acids and sugars; caramelization is a separate sugar-only process.

  9. Round 9 SPACE
    • ✓ TRUE

      Pluto was reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union in 2006.

      TRUE. A new definition of 'planet' left Pluto out, reassigning it as a dwarf planet.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Pluto has never been visited by a spacecraft because it lies too far away to be reached.

      FALSE. NASA's New Horizons probe flew past Pluto in 2015, returning the first close-up images ever taken.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Pluto and its large moon Charon are tidally locked, permanently showing the same face to one another.

      TRUE. They keep the same sides pointed at each other as they spin, an unusual mutual lock.

  10. Round 10 GEOGRAPHY
    • ✓ TRUE

      Spain and Portugal together make up most of the Iberian Peninsula.

      TRUE. The Iberian Peninsula is shared mainly by Spain and Portugal.

    • ✓ TRUE

      France borders many more countries than Portugal does, including Spain, Italy, and Germany.

      TRUE. France shares land borders with numerous nations, among them Spain, Italy, and Germany.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Portugal shares land borders with both Spain and France on the European mainland.

      FALSE. Portugal's only land border is with Spain; it does not touch France.

← All past cases

Baloney — spot the fabricated fact before the timer runs out

Each round is three short statements, two of them true and one invented. Baloney is a free daily game about catching a plausible lie you do not have the knowledge to refute. No account, no install, ten rounds a day.

What the game actually asks you to do

Every UTC day, Baloney deals the same ten rounds to everyone. Each round is three short statements on a single topic, and exactly one of the three is a fabrication written by the people who made the game. You read all three and tap the one you believe is invented. A thirty-second timer runs on each round, and if it expires without a tap the round is scored as a miss — a detective who cannot decide has been fooled.

The moment you tap, the round resolves in place. The invention is stamped FAKE, the other two are stamped TRUE, and all three carry a one-line explanation of the real story, so a round never leaves a false claim sitting in your head without the correction next to it. The fabrication also reports what share of that day's players fell for it.

Ten rounds is a run of at most about five minutes, and usually less, since a round ends the moment you commit. Then you get a score out of ten, a verdict band, and your streak. A perfect ten is "Baloney Immune"; eight or nine is "Certified Skeptic"; six or seven is "Sharp Nose"; four or five is "Occasionally Fooled"; two or three is "Easily Fooled"; zero or one is "Believes Everything". There is nothing to install, no account and no email address.

Why this is not a trivia game

The distinction is the whole point of the format. Trivia asks whether you know a fact. Baloney asks whether you can smell a lie. You are never asked what is true — you are asked to catch what is false — and those turn out to be different muscles. Someone who would fail every general-knowledge quiz can still be an excellent fake-spotter, because nothing in the game requires recall.

That is also why the game is not easier on the subjects you know. A fabricated claim about a topic you are confident in gets less scrutiny than a claim about a topic you know is foreign to you; expertise is exactly the camouflage a good lie hides behind.

The design also closes off the cheapest shortcut. In every round the two true statements are chosen to sound improbable — they are the ones that provoke "that can't be real". So the feeling of disbelief is not evidence. Two of the three statements earn that reaction honestly, and only one deserves it.

What the game refuses to make up

Most daily games show you a number about "other players" and you take it on faith. Baloney's crowd line is built so that it cannot be invented, and you can see the seams if you look for them. The "% got fooled" figure is the real share of that day's finishers who missed that exact fabrication. Until at least twenty people have finished the day, the line is omitted entirely rather than estimated — on a quiet morning you will see nothing where the number would be, which is the correct answer.

The percentile works the same way. When you finish, your score is submitted once to the day's tally, which returns the day's score distribution; "you were sharper than X% of today's detectives" is the share of players who scored at or below you, computed from that distribution. If the tally is unreachable or the crowd is still too small, that sentence is replaced by "You're one of the first on the case today." Your score, your band and your streak are arithmetic in your own browser and never wait on a network call, so a failed request costs you a crowd figure, not your result.

Two smaller honesties are worth stating plainly. Your streak and today's result are stored in your browser's local storage, not on a server, which means they do not follow you to another device and clearing your browsing data clears them. And the once-a-day lock is client-side — best-effort rather than tamper-proof. A determined player can clear storage and replay, and the archive below will answer any past case outright. The game would rather say that than imply a security it does not have.

The case pool, in numbers

The pool currently holds 150 rounds and ten are served per day, so the whole pool cycles every fifteen days — with daily play a round comes back about two weeks later. The topics and their counts: animals 22, geography 21, language 19, science 19, nature 18, space 17, history 17, food 17.

Two things are worth knowing before you play, and both are checkable rather than asserted. The first is that length is not a tell. Across the pool the fabrications average 104 characters and the true statements average 104 as well, and the fake is the longest statement in its round only about a third of the time. The supposedly "too tidy" fabrication is not measurably tidier than the facts it is hiding among.

The second is that position is not a tell. Of the 150 rounds, 52 put the fabrication in the first slot, 50 in the second and 48 in the third — against the roughly 50 apiece you would expect if position were random. The widest gap is four rounds, well inside the wobble a fair coin gives at this sample size, so no slot is worth favouring: tapping the first statement every time is worth what tapping the third is worth, which is what guessing is worth. An earlier version of this page reported a real third-slot bias — 67 rounds out of 150; the statements are no longer served in the order they were written, and that edge is gone.

The archive is what makes numbers like these verifiable instead of promotional. It lists the past month of closed cases, and each one opens fully declassified: which statement was the invention, and the truth of all three.

Practising, and what to practise on

Because past cases declassify, the archive is also the only real training ground. Reading an old case file cold — deciding before you scroll to the answer — beats replaying a round you already know, and it builds a sample bigger than ten rounds a day.

A few habits earn their keep across both.

Questions people ask

Is Baloney free, and do I need an account?
It is free and there is no account. The game is ad-supported, runs in your browser and installs nothing. Your streak and today's result are kept in your own browser, so there is nothing to sign up for and no personal details are asked for.
Are the facts in Baloney real?
Two of the three statements in every round are genuine facts. The third is a fabrication written by the game's authors, and it is always revealed and corrected in the same round it appears, so nothing false is left planted in your memory unexplained.
How long does one game take?
Ten rounds with a thirty-second timer on each, so at most about five minutes and usually less, because a round ends as soon as you tap a statement. There is no way to bank time between rounds.
Is it the same puzzle for everyone?
Yes. One set of ten rounds is served per UTC day and the same set goes to every player, with a fresh case at midnight UTC. That is what makes comparing a verdict with a friend meaningful — you both faced the identical statements.
What does "% got fooled" mean, and why is it sometimes missing?
It is the real share of that day's players who failed to catch that particular fabrication. It is hidden until at least twenty people have finished the day, and it is never estimated or filled in with a plausible-looking number — so if you are playing early or the game is quiet, the line simply is not there.
Can I play past days?
Yes, through the case archive, which lists roughly the last month of closed cases. Each past case opens fully declassified — the fabrication marked, and the truth behind all three statements — which makes it a usable practice set. Today's case stays sealed until you have played it.

Last reviewed 2026-09-17.