Att. Wordsmiths: Your Knowledge Can Help End World Hunger

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I’m going away for the next couple of days, so here’s that fun wordgame again, that you can play, and actually not be wasting your time doing it.

I’m not kidding; if you play the vocabulary game at the Free Rice Website, you have the opportunity to actually help end world hunger.

Here’s how it works: For every word definition that you get correct, ten grains of rice are donated to The United Nations World Food Program.

The website started on October 7, and earned 830 grains of rice. It has grown exponentially ever since with 128,386,810 grains of rice earned on November 23rd, for a total of 3,531,907,160 grains of rice. Not too shabby.

Who pays for the donated rice? Free Rice explains:

The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry). We commend these companies for their participation at FreeRice.

If Free Rice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?

FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 10 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.

Got it? Good. So go do a good deed, today, play this game, and win some rice for some hungry people.

My best level so far is 41, but I’m just getting started. Ecru means beige????

Hat tip: My son, who’s been playing this game in his Language Arts class.

UPDATE: (December 4)

More than a few people believe that the Free Rice site is a hoax, (judging from my search engine terms in the stats).

It’s not a hoax.

Sheesh, everything you see on the internet is not a hoax, folks!

44 thoughts on “Att. Wordsmiths: Your Knowledge Can Help End World Hunger”

  1. My wife had told me about it, but I never made the effort to go there until you linked it. Nice idea, and they’ve got some amazing words there.

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  2. I donated 10 grains of rice and quit. Now I have moral authority and the ability to lord my generous superiority over others.

    It’s such a ….liberal….. feeling……

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  8. pajama momma,

    You know those twelve half-eaten Big Macs that you wake up to find on your chest when you wake up after a drunken McDonalds orgy?

    Send those puppies.

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  9. I just cut out the middle man and mailed 10 grains of rice to Africa.

    Yeah, thanks for sending them postage due, you cheap bastard.

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  16. I’m pretty sure there is an inverse relationship between the number of comments on the thread and the seriousness of those comments.

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  19. Rice, rice, rice. All we ever get is rice. Well, we’re sick of rice. Every time Bono comes over here with rice we tell him we’re sick of it and all he ever says is “just put some cow dung in it for flavor”. Really Bono? Cow dung? Do you flavor your $300 vegetarian meals with cow dung Bono? Ok, you probably do, but we’d really prefer some pizza or a steak.

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  20. I’m pretty sure there is an inverse relationship between the number of comments on the thread and the seriousness of those comments.

    I think there’s a relationship between the number of comments on this thread and the amount of time Rosetta has on his hands.

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  21. It appears that a cup of rice is something like 1000 grains. I’m going to try to bang out two cups a day.

    …and I’d like to see what the words at Level 50 are like. They must be amazing. I’ve hit 47 a couple of times, but quickly got put in my place (~ 45).

    0

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  31. …and I’d like to see what the words at Level 50 are like.

    Been there (briefly), and there’s really no change in the words as you go from 46 to 50. You just have to survive the onslaught long enough to make it. I think the way it works is that if you miss a word you drop a level, and then it takes 3 correct answers to regain that level.

    Fortunately the words repeat themselves, so after you start learning them, you can improve your score by 4 – 5 levels in a single session.

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  36. Yeah, I found out about this thingy a week or two ago, I’ve done I think 2-3000 grains. I think I peaked at level 40. I used to have a much better vocab…I’m depressed.

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  38. Can’t get past 45. Dammit.

    Geoff just reminded me about this thing, so I’ll be stuck trying to make it over 45 for the next hour.

    It kind of sucks when you get up there and then miss a few words you should know and get knocked all the way back into the high 30’s.

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  41. Pingback: Words don’t suck « Absolute Moral Authority

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