Please go play FreeRice right now. It’s a great exam­ple of using gam­ing for some seri­ous good.

• Click on the answer that best defines the word.
• If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an eas­ier word.
• For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

“FreeRice has a cus­tom data­base con­tain­ing thou­sands of words at vary­ing degrees of dif­fi­culty. There are words appro­pri­ate for peo­ple just learn­ing Eng­lish and words that will chal­lenge the most schol­arly pro­fes­sors. In between are thou­sands of words for stu­dents, busi­ness peo­ple, home­mak­ers, doc­tors, truck dri­vers, retired peo­ple… everyone!

FreeRice auto­mat­i­cally adjusts to your level of vocab­u­lary. It starts by giv­ing you words at dif­fer­ent lev­els of dif­fi­culty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approx­i­mate start­ing level. You then deter­mine a more exact level for your­self as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an eas­ier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keep­ing you at the ‘outer fringe’ of your vocab­u­lary, where learn­ing can take place.

There are 50 lev­els in all, but it is rare for peo­ple to get above level 48.”