Free Rice

[erooMynohtnA]

Has anyone else seen this online word game? For every word you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

I was told 50 is the highest level, but I've never been higher than 45, and I usually stall around 42.

I think I've accounted for about 5,000 grains so far. I really like playing it, and it's nice to track your progress by seeing how many grains you have. Plus, if feeding starving people is your thing, there's that too.

[Lemonaide]

That sounds nice. I'll look into it, but also I wondered, [now this sound crazy but what the heck we might as well rearrange the entire universe while we're at it] What if Africa became an entire nation, with Cairo as its capital, then they would be able to look at the continent in its entirety, and realize that they have farming, they already have many areas dedicated to city life, and then they could pool resources to take care of SWETO and so forth, it could work. I'll bet they could grow lots of crops on big farms - yams and sweet potatoe could be a winner - lots of Vitamin A - keeps well in storage, ships well and then grow cattle and ship around the continent. Does that sound logical or illogical? Can they grow rice - and corn is a good one as well.

I'm into crop rotation and there's one more thing, soil becomes depleated without crop rotation, and if you plant in different directions on the same farm the soil stays richer long.

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Like the above diagram - patchwork style.

[erooMynohtnA]

Or they could all just play this game and stop killing eachother. But whatever, yours sounds good too.

[mrbiggs]

I usually don't buy into these sorts of things (where you have to do something and someone else donates to charity--if they have the money, why don't they do it anyway? And if they don't have the money, why would they want me to join?)

However, this game is fun anyway. And my parents said that my year of Latin wouldn't put food on the table.

[Neinteen]

LOL

nice game.

[Beloit Fencer of Old]

I hope that they, at least, hire poor, starving people to count out every ten grains of rice. It would be a shame if they actually hire rich Westerners to do this work...what a waste of money. I would be pissed if they hired Halliburton to do it.

[pokey]

Who has the job counting out 10 grains of rice, and how much are they being paid?

Somewhere in Africa I'm envisioning a worker dishing out the rice allotment and saying "Sorry, those westerners didn't get as many words this time. You get 20 grains less than last week."

[erooMynohtnA]

The advertisers from the bottom of the page are the ones buying the rice. With every correct word, it spawns three new little ads, and those companies then pay.

I imagine they don't manually count the grains of rice, but rather go by weight, seeing as their total donated since the 7th of October is over 100 million grains.

[pokey]

Boy, my vocabulary needs work. I'm stalling around 40.

If you go by 50,000 grains = 1kg of rice number that I found from googling, yesterday accrued enough credits for roughly 570 pounds of rice.

[fencingfrog]

riposte was one of my words!! they said it meant retort though. but cool!

[lefty_monster]

Originally Posted by mrbiggs

However, this game is fun anyway. And my parents said that my year of Latin wouldn't put food on the table.

They probably meant YOUR table.

Originally Posted by fencingfrog

riposte was one of my words!! they said it meant retort though. but cool!

Well, I guess it's correct. On windows live arcade I've gotten a few fencing-related words. See? Our plans for stealthy world domination are working!!

[RkfdFencer]

I spent some time at 39 - 41, but made it up to 44 before dropping back down. Some of the words are brand new to me and others I had down to two possibilities.

I had a teacher that once told the class, with much exasperation, that if we had a 50/50 chance on something, we would be wrong 100% of the time. I forget what we had done to spark that bit of encouragement.

[erooMynohtnA]

Originally Posted by RkfdFencer

I spent some time at 39 - 41, but made it up to 44 before dropping back down. Some of the words are brand new to me and others I had down to two possibilities.

I had a teacher that once told the class, with much exasperation, that if we had a 50/50 chance on something, we would be wrong 100% of the time. I forget what we had done to spark that bit of encouragement.

Honestly, most of my answers are guesses based on root words. Once I get past 40, rarely do I get a word right because I actually know the definition.

[TangMan]

I gotta be honest, I saw this topic and thought, "Condi's in jail? o.0"

[tehcow]

awesome site! i think i've got up to about 42 and dropped to as low as 35 so far, sort of staying somewhere in the ball park of 39 consistently. but it's a fun time sink, and makes me feel as if i'm not totally wasting my time.

[Goldgar]

I seem to be stuck at 50. Is that really the highest?

It bothers me that some of the definitions they are accepting are incorrect. You can still guess them, because they're the closest ones in the list, but they're still not right.

[erooMynohtnA]

I have had people complain about that before, and I prefer to think of it as a best synonym situation, not a definition.

I'm surprised all the years of standardized testing haven't inured everyone to pick the wrong answer they know the man wants as opposed to the correct one the man doesn't.

I have been told 50 is as high as it goes. I don't know for sure. I have never been.

[tehcow]

if you check the faq page it says 50 is the highest.