Proud of your vocabulary? Test yourself, and at the same time earn grains of rice as contributions to the UN World Food Programme. For every word whose meaning you guess correctly, you'll earn 20 grains of rice towards the UN programme. 100 grains is a bowl. And at the same time you'll learn new words!

It's all completely free; the rice is paid for by the advertisers whose commercials appear at the bottom of the screen, as is explained in the FAQ.

Improve your vocabulary and feed the hungry!

Keep an eye on your vocabulary level, too. Each time you get a word wrong, your current level drops and you'll get an easier word. Each time you get a word right, you'll get a harder word, and every few correct words your level will increase. My highest level is 49. ETA: 51.

Good luck!


Wendy

Oooh. That's addictive! My highest is 45 so far, and it nearly broke my brain. I think I'll need to go read some Very Hard Books or learn some Latin to score any higher .

Caroline

Well, I'm glad it's for a good cause, because it was a bit depressing for me. /me thinks reading the dictionary in my spare time might be a good idea.

BJ

I'm with you, BJ. A lot of those words are big and scary...

And I reached 38 and my brain went 'poit' and quit. This was after going all the way down to 27

But yay, 2k+ grains of rice donated! Woohoo!

What a cool find!

I can't get past 40 and I consider myself lucky that a lot of the words I've seen so far are basically identical to the French ones, which I know, else I would soooooo totally suck at this game. *lol*

Gotta stop before I spend my entire evening there, though, or I'll never write another line of fic, I'm sure. hehe!

Flense? Who ever heard of flense?

And isn't it funny that restive means fidgety? (I knew that one, though.)

Anyway, I topped out at 41 before my brain screamed, "Enough!" Donated 1780 grains of rice.

They totally put in rare words and sometimes strange definitions to normal words, but it's really fun . I topped out at 46 and there was much brain hurt involved.

But a good hurt.

alcyone

PS I have to credit Sue for how I knew 'buss'

What a great little site, Wendy. Totally addictive! I passed on the url to the BBC News 24's computer program, Click. They have a segment called Webscape which rounds up interesting sites each week. Would be cool if they used it - get the word out.

The temptation to cheat must be massive though. If you sit with a dictionary, you'd get every word right and more rice!

No, I didn't. <g> I did discover that I apparently know many more words than I imagined I did. And I seem to have a knack, hitherto undiscovered, of correctly guessing on the words I haven't a clue on. I got almost as high a percentage right on those guesses as I did on the words I definitely knew.

But it's surprising what sticks in the subconscious. How on earth I know that a grimilkin is an elderly female cat is beyond me completely. LOL!


LabRat

I visit that site very occasionally. Don't think I've managed to go higher than 47. However, a colleague of mine, an English teacher who is perfectly Swedish, regularly hits 50 or better.

P.S. You know you are in trouble when you not only fail to choose the correct word, but you don't understand the explanation, either.

Ann

Top score 41, and I've always considered my vocabulary to be pretty fantastic... Honestly, a lot of the words I had no idea about but I knew enough about the latin roots that I was able to guess on quite a few.

I think I got up to 46, but I'm hungry and my brain isn't cooperating.

Got to 51 on my fourth attempt, but I think there was a certain amount of guesswork in there.

Make that 52 and 2260 grains before I got bored.

This also proves that watching endless hours of TV and being a couch potato is actually educational.

I knew that a bumbershoot was an umbrella and an atelier was a studio, thanks to Frasier. And, courtesy of many episodes of NYPD Blue, that a bodago was a wineshop.

LabRat

43 on my first attempt, and because many words had latin roots.
I'll try again, this is addictive!

EDIT:now I can barely get 42!

Simona

It really has to do with luck, I guess. First, I got up to 39 (oops, only?) with a lot of stuff from biology or with Latin roots - both things I know a bit about. But then, I got a few that exist in a very similar spelling in German - and mean something entirely different. As I said, it's all a matter of luck. Anyway, I can proudly claim that, within no more than two months, my English vocabulary has increased for about five levels. And I have no idea how I did it.

Anyway, why is 'leitmotif' spelled with an f? It obviously stems from the German word Leitmotiv, but why the different spelling?