Case File #0075

Sep 4, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

  1. Round 1 SPACE
    • ✗ 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.

    • ✓ 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.

  2. Round 2 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.

  3. Round 3 GEOGRAPHY
    • ✓ TRUE

      Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest lake in the world and holds about a fifth of all unfrozen surface fresh water.

      TRUE. It plunges more than 1,600 metres and holds around 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Lake Baikal is a saltwater sea connected to the ocean, which is why seals are able to live there.

      FALSE. Baikal is a freshwater lake far inland; its seals are adapted to fresh water, not an ocean connection.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Lake Baikal is so old and isolated that it hosts many species found nowhere else, including a unique freshwater seal.

      TRUE. The Baikal seal is the world's only exclusively freshwater seal.

  4. Round 4 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.

  5. Round 5 FOOD
    • ✓ TRUE

      The sandwich's name is traditionally traced to an 18th-century English aristocrat who held the title Earl of Sandwich.

      TRUE. The popular story credits the Earl of Sandwich, who wanted a meal he could eat without leaving his table.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Eating fillings between or inside bread long predates the English name and appears across many cuisines.

      TRUE. Bread-wrapped foods existed worldwide long before the English word 'sandwich' was coined.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      The sandwich is named after a French village called Sandwich, famous for its bread-and-filling meals.

      FALSE. It is named after an 18th-century English noble titled the Earl of Sandwich, not a French village.

  6. Round 6 NATURE
    • ✗ FABRICATION

      The Nile is the only major river in the world that flows from south to north, which long made maps of it unusual.

      FALSE — plenty of large rivers flow south-to-north; direction depends only on where the land slopes downhill, so the Nile isn't unique.

    • ✓ TRUE

      The Amazon River discharges more water into the sea than the next several largest rivers combined.

      TRUE — its outflow is so vast that it dilutes ocean saltiness far offshore from its mouth.

    • ✓ TRUE

      For most of its length the Amazon's main stem has no bridges crossing it.

      TRUE — width, wetlands, and sparse road networks mean the main river is crossed almost entirely by boat.

  7. Round 7 HISTORY
    • ✓ TRUE

      Christopher Columbus completed his first transatlantic crossing in 1492, reaching islands in the Caribbean.

      TRUE — he made landfall in the Bahamas that October, opening sustained European contact with the Americas.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Columbus mainly sailed west to prove the Earth was round, a fact nearly all educated Europeans of his day denied.

      FALSE — educated Europeans already knew the Earth was round; the real dispute was how far away Asia was.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Columbus believed to the end that he had reached the outskirts of Asia rather than a new continent.

      TRUE — he insisted he had found a route to the Indies, not an unknown landmass.

  8. Round 8 SPACE
    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Sound travels through the vacuum of space at roughly one-tenth of the speed it moves at on Earth.

      FALSE. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum at all, because there are no molecules to carry the vibrations.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Astronauts tend to grow slightly taller during spaceflight because the spine stretches without gravity compressing it.

      TRUE. The discs between vertebrae expand in microgravity, adding a few centimeters until they return home.

    • ✓ TRUE

      In the microgravity of space, a candle flame burns as a rounded blob rather than the teardrop shape seen on Earth.

      TRUE. Without gravity-driven convection, hot gases don't rise, so flames form spheres.

  9. Round 9 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.

  10. Round 10 LANGUAGE
    • ✗ FABRICATION

      The word 'denim' comes from the English phrase 'the name', because tailors labelled the tough cloth simply as their signature 'name' fabric.

      FALSE. 'Denim' comes from French 'de Nimes' (from the city of Nimes), where a similar serge cloth was made.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Braille represents letters and numbers using patterns of raised dots read by touch, a system developed in the nineteenth century.

      TRUE. Each character is a cell of up to six raised dots, felt with the fingertips.

    • ✓ TRUE

      The word 'jeans' ultimately derives from Genoa, the Italian port city, by way of the old French name for that place.

      TRUE. A fustian cloth from Genoa (French 'Genes') gave its name to the garment.

← 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.