The Misadventures of José Faxner

Not too long ago, by way of the very cool and interesting independent games blog TIGSource, I caught wind of equally cool and interesting FreeRice.com.

The basic concept of FreeRice.com is that it lets the reader test his or her vocabulary, and for every word you manage to guess correctly, 10 grains of rice will be donated to The United Nations World Food Program. It’s a very fun and addictive game, and knowing that playing it actually might do some good only serves to make things even sweeter.

I always strive to improve my English vocabulary, and as far as alternatives to reading the dictionary go, FreeRice.com ranks pretty highly in my eyes. The game keeps track of your “Vocabulary Level” and decides the difficulty on words given thereafter, so the addictive nature of the game isn’t so much due the excitement of donating rice, but rather a result of the never-ending struggle to raise your Vocabulary Level.

How high can you get?