How to play Bogus — free online fact or fake game
Six claims, some pure fiction. Tap the fakes, trust the facts.
- Players
- 2–4
- Length
- ~6 min
- Type
- Fakes
- Price
- Free
Bogus puts six claims on the table under a single theme and quietly makes some of them up. Your job is to tap the fakes and leave the real ones alone.
What makes it harder than it sounds is that reality is consistently stranger than the invented claims. The pink fairy armadillo is real; the thing that sounds plausible and boring is the one somebody wrote.
Free, no app and no sign-up to join — players hop in with a 4-letter code on their own phone.
How to play Bogus
The host picks the round count
Ten rounds is the default at about 30 seconds each. Six is quick; fourteen is a long session.
Six claims appear under a theme
All six sit on one screen — animals, history, science, whatever the round's theme is.
Tap the ones you think are fake
You're marking accusations, not answers. Leave anything you believe alone.
Lock in your verdict
One submission per round, so you commit to the whole set at once rather than one claim at a time.
Each claim flips
The reveal turns every claim over as REAL or BOGUS, and you find out which confident accusation just cost you.
What Bogus looks like
How scoring works
Catching a fake banks points. Accusing a real fact costs you points — which is what stops the winning strategy from being 'tap everything'.
A clean sweep — every fake caught and no real claim accused — earns the round's crown on top of the per-claim scoring.
Points accumulate across rounds, so the winner is whoever is best calibrated rather than whoever is most suspicious.
Tips for winning Bogus
- Only accuse what you can argue against. The penalty for a wrong accusation means silence is genuinely the profitable option when you're unsure.
- Suspect the boring ones. Invented claims tend to sound reasonable; real ones are often too strange to make up.
- Watch the theme. A round about deep-sea life can support far weirder truths than one about European capitals.
- Count how many you're accusing. If you've marked five of six, you're almost certainly about to lose points.
Frequently asked questions
How many players do you need for Bogus?
Two to four.
Do I lose points for guessing wrong?
Yes — accusing a real fact costs you. That penalty is what makes the game a calibration test rather than a tapping exercise.
How long does a game take?
About 6 minutes at the default ten rounds.
Is it free?
Yes, free to play and free to host, with no account required to join.
Free, no app and no sign-up to join — players hop in with a 4-letter code on their own phone.