Case File #0084

Sep 13, 2026 — 10 rounds, declassified. The fabrication in each is marked; the truth of all three follows. Play today's case →

  1. Round 1 SCIENCE
    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Gold is the densest naturally occurring element, heavier than osmium, iridium and platinum.

      FALSE. Osmium and iridium are denser than gold; gold is very dense but not the densest element.

    • ✓ TRUE

      The gold in Earth's crust was likely forged in extreme cosmic events, such as colliding neutron stars, and delivered by ancient asteroid impacts.

      TRUE. Heavy elements like gold form in rare, violent events and were later delivered to the surface.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Gold is so malleable that a single gram can be hammered into a sheet of about one square metre.

      TRUE. Gold's extraordinary ductility allows a gram to be beaten into a remarkably thin, wide foil.

  2. Round 2 SCIENCE
    • ✓ TRUE

      Glass is made mainly from sand, which is melted at very high temperatures into a clear solid.

      TRUE. Silica sand is the primary ingredient, melted and cooled into glass.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Tempered glass breaks into small blunt pieces instead of sharp shards, due to internal stress from rapid cooling.

      TRUE. Quick cooling locks in stresses that make the glass crumble into pebbles when it fails.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Bulletproof glass is really just one extremely thick pane of specially hardened crystal.

      FALSE. It's actually layers of glass bonded with tough plastic like polycarbonate, which absorb and spread the impact.

  3. Round 3 FOOD
    • ✓ TRUE

      Carrots were originally cultivated in colors like purple and yellow, with orange becoming common only later.

      TRUE. Early domesticated carrots were purple and yellow; the familiar orange carrot rose to prominence centuries afterward.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Wild carrots were first domesticated for their sweet roots in ancient Egypt around the same time as wheat.

      FALSE. Carrot domestication is centered on Central Asia far more recently, and early carrots were grown for leaves and seeds, not sweet roots.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Early carrot growing valued the plant's aromatic leaves and seeds before its root became the prize.

      TRUE. Like related plants, the carrot was first useful for its foliage and seeds before selective breeding fattened the root.

  4. Round 4 SCIENCE
    • ✓ TRUE

      The Eiffel Tower can stand about 15 centimeters taller in summer, because its iron expands as it heats up.

      TRUE. Metals expand when warmed, so the tower literally grows a bit in the summer sun.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Metal feels colder than wood in the same room because metal naturally sits a few degrees below room temperature.

      FALSE. Both are at the same temperature; metal only feels colder because it pulls heat from your hand much faster.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Under certain conditions, hot water can freeze faster than cold water, an effect named after Erasto Mpemba.

      TRUE. This counterintuitive Mpemba effect has been observed, though the exact reasons are still debated.

  5. Round 5 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.

  6. Round 6 GEOGRAPHY
    • ✗ FABRICATION

      The Sahara is the single largest desert on Earth, larger even than the continent of Antarctica.

      FALSE. Antarctica is actually the largest desert on Earth; the Sahara is only the largest hot one.

    • ✓ TRUE

      The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert, covering an area roughly comparable to the United States.

      TRUE. The Sahara is the largest hot desert, about the size of the continental US.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Antarctica is classified as a desert because it receives extremely little precipitation.

      TRUE. Despite the ice, Antarctica's very low precipitation makes it a desert by definition.

  7. Round 7 SCIENCE
    • ✓ TRUE

      A microwave oven heats food mainly by making water molecules rotate rapidly, producing heat.

      TRUE. The oscillating field flips water molecules back and forth, and that agitation generates the heat.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Microwave ovens cook food from the inside out, heating the center before the surface warms up.

      FALSE. Microwaves penetrate only a few centimeters and heat outer layers first; the center warms by conduction.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Metal in a microwave can throw sparks because the field drives currents that build up at sharp edges.

      TRUE. Charges concentrate at points and edges, and the resulting arcing shows up as sparks.

  8. Round 8 NATURE
    • ✓ TRUE

      The salt in the ocean comes mainly from rocks on land, dissolved by rain and carried to the sea by rivers over millions of years.

      TRUE. Weathering releases dissolved minerals that rivers steadily deliver to the ocean.

    • ✓ TRUE

      The Dead Sea is so salty that people float in it with almost no effort.

      TRUE. Its extreme salt content makes the water much denser than a human body.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Adding salt to water makes it freeze at a higher temperature, which is why the sea ices over faster than a freshwater lake.

      FALSE. Salt lowers the freezing point, so salty seawater freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water.

  9. Round 9 ANIMALS
    • ✓ TRUE

      A camel's hump stores fat, not water, and acts as an energy reserve the animal can metabolise.

      TRUE. The hump is fatty tissue; it does not hold a reservoir of water.

    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Camels store large reserves of water inside their humps, which is how they survive weeks without drinking.

      FALSE. Their water conservation comes from physiology and behaviour, not a hump water tank — the hump is fat.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Camels can close their nostrils and have long eyelashes plus a third eyelid to keep out blowing sand.

      TRUE. These adaptations protect the eyes and airways in desert storms.

  10. Round 10 HISTORY
    • ✗ FABRICATION

      Ancient Sparta ran a powerful navy that dominated the Mediterranean and rivaled the Persian fleet at its height.

      FALSE — Sparta was a land power built on its infantry; it was Athens that commanded the great Greek navy.

    • ✓ TRUE

      Sparta was known for a demanding, state-run military upbringing that shaped its male citizens from boyhood.

      TRUE — the agoge trained Spartan boys for a life centered on soldiering.

    • ✓ TRUE

      At Thermopylae in 480 BC, a small Greek force under the Spartan king Leonidas held a narrow pass against Persia.

      TRUE — Leonidas and his allies made a famous last stand at the pass.

← 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.