Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette of “A Way with Words” show suggests this addictive website.  Test your vocabulary while feeding the hungry.  Great fun.  And the time doesn’t seem so wasted.

http://www.freerice.com

The words get harder as you go along.  My score got up to 47 out of 50 but then crashed to 42 then back up to 43 where I quite after 1230 grains of rice (10 for each correct answer).  Lots of educated guesses.

I was all prepared to peal out a triple bob of Oeco, Oeco, Oeco, because I could have sworn that this had been already posted. It isn’t here though so I must have seen it elsewhere (language hat?). Yes, it’s an addictive site, I keep getting annoyingly tripped up just when I think I’m on a roll. Perseverance is the key.

Yeah, I posted it here, so that may be where you saw it.  Fun site, and educational.  I approve.

I discovered it from the languagehat site and it’s good fun.  Got straight to 50 but now I just keep going so that I can always leave my level at 50 - means a longish session sometimes.  Some great words turn up in the meantime.

Great conversation over at your site, LH.  It is fun.  The folks did a great job on picking the words, and, as you note in the discussion, they have a wicked sense of humor.

edit: just including sinistral at all shows the sense of humor.  I got it because I’ve heard left-handed people complain about ugly words related to them and positive words related to their counterparts (adroit).

I got up to 48 before falling back to 41. I fought my way back to 48 before quitting at 1500 grains.

Between all my various addresses, about a dozen people sent me to that site, including the people who run the thing. Lots of fun! The highest I got was 47--and only then because many of the harder words were of French origin.

It’s a conspiracy. I got to 47 many times and every time at 47 began missing word after word. Good fun, though.

Was annoyed that I could never get past 50, then looked at the FAQ and saw that 50 is the maximum score.  Came back here to report this and I see that it was already mentioned.  Guess I should read more carefully.

Hovered around the 46 mark generally and began to get repeat questions after about 1800 grains. Have to say my answers where a high proportion of correct guesses. Fun site though.

For those interested, the consensus out there seems to be that 2000 grains of rice is about 1/4 cup.

Yesterday 48,038,530 grains (about 6K cups) of rice were donated.

For us rightpondians, how much is a cup?

About 225 cubic centimeters, or roughly 200 grams. [The latter conversion is not general, of course, but applies specifically to (white) rice.]

3/4 UK cup plus 2 dessert spoons according to this recipe conversion site.

edit: what Dr. T said.

jheem - 05 November 2007 07:57 AM

Yesterday 48,038,530 grains (about 6K cups) of rice were donated.

Sorry to be cheeky but wouldn’t this vary depending on whether we are talking about long-grained rice like basmati or short-grained rice like calrose or arborio (the stuff that risotto is made from)?  I’m willing to wager, erm say a loaf of bread, that a cup of long-grained rice will contain more grains than a cup of short-grained rice.

Great site.  I bounced around from 41 -47 before the repeats kicked in.