Free Rice

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Sayeth Joystiq:

Satiate intercontinental voracity with online vocabulary game

Ever feel you're wasting your time with games? Feel like you should be doing something to better yourself or the world around you instead of staring at a screen? Well, with Poverty.com's Free Rice game, you can do your part for personal and global fulfillment without ever stopping the gaming.

The self-betterment in Free Rice comes from vocabulary identification questions that automatically adjust to your skills so they're challenging but not impossible. The world-improvement comes from the eponymous free rice, ten grains of which are donated through the UN's World Food Program and the site's advertisers for each right answer you provide. In the past month, over 856 million grains of rice have been donated, with the total rising exponentially day over day.

We love the idea, and think this model has potential for all sorts of games. Every Halo headshot can net a donation to Amnesty international (sponsored by Mountain Dew). Every five star Guitar Hero performance could give money to Save the Music (sponsored by VH1, of course). Bill Gates could add few bucks to his foundation for every Achievement point earned. The possibilities are endless.

I'm surprised how much I still know; I thought the last six years of doing basically nothing but surf the internet had destroyed all my knowledge, but actually it just destroyed my ability to call it up without very specific prompting.

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

out of a hundred, my average vocab level was 42.

[Razor Ramon]

The use of a thesaurus all of these years has crippled me. My average was 33.

[Regus]

My level before I quit:

Donated 580 Grains of Rice
Vocab Level: 40

that was fun

[Yoshi]

I got carried away and donated 1,080 grains. Nice find.

[Cowutopia]

there are some serious words on here!

I hit level 45 in about 40 words and got tired of it.

[Chux]

1000 Grains level 39.

Thank you Latin class.

[johnk_]

surprisingly, pundit means expert... go figure.

[kingoffighters]

1200, but only lvl 37. Can't get over 40.

[Frogacuda]

42. I can break that but not for long. It starts throwing out ridiculous words and some of the definitions to choose from are not quite accurate, either.