Words to Feed the World

Language mavens take heed: you can feed the hungry and build your vocabulary at the same time, while slacking off online, by visiting www.freerice.com. The home page is built around an interactive vocabulary quiz, and for every word you guess correctly, the site’s sponsors donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations’ World Food Program.

I learned about it from the Idaho Foodbank’s latest newsletter and couldn’t resist logging on and spending way too much time there immediately. In the process of contributing thousands of grains of rice, I also learned that a “sastruga” is a wind-formed snow ridge and that “luculent” is another word for clear. That’s my idea of a good day.

The vocabulary is challenging, even for a person who brags that she has to buy a massive dictionary to find one that contains words she doesn’t know. The site lets you customize the level of difficulty and track your progress, and you can hear how a word should be pronounced by clicking the speaker icon next to it.

Not only does FreeRice give slackers everywhere a way to feed their brains while feeding the hungry, it also exemplifies elegant simplicity in website design. Everything works: the navigation is logical, the design clean and appropriate to the subject, and the content is informative, interesting, and well-written. For an example of what I mean, take a look at the about page. Does clean, clear copy get any better than that?

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