Do you like words? If you want to test your vocabulary and add to it while helping to feed the hungry people of the world, try Freerice.
For every correct answer to FreeRice’s online vocabulary game, the site donates 10 grains of rice to its official humanitarian partner, WFP [United Nations World Food Programme].
The money for the rice comes from the sponsors of the advertisements on the site (you don’t have to click on the ads/adverts to play). The program has recently passed the one billion mark: 1,330,639,890 grains of rice since October 7, 2007, and 136,236,930 grains just yesterday (daily totals).
The quiz is addictive for three reasons:
- Who wants to quit when you might know the next coming word?
- You can see the difficulty-level number going up and down as you get correct and incorrect answers, and who wants to quit on a lower level than you had been on?
- Who wants to quit when you can see the grains (literally, with graphics) adding up to be sent to starving people?
I’m not sure how long I played the first time, but I got past 1,300 grains of rice (including educated guesses and random ones) as my level kept going up and down between levels 40 and 44 (50 is the highest level and very low levels are for nonnative students of English).
According to the FAQ, the difficulty level for a word is based on how many people get it correct or not. Some of the words in the low 40s seemed pretty easy even for a well-read high-school student and some were both obscure and useless except for specialists. But it’s fun, and it’s for a great cause. Plus, they tell you the correct answers when you’re wrong. Oh, excuse me, I just got up to level 47 almost immediately. Busy now.