Free Rice Passes One Billion Grains

Internet vocabulary game brings food to the hungry.

The Internet world game Free Rice went online last month and has already generated one billion grains of rice, which is enough to feed 50,000 people for oneday.   In the vocabulary game, users earn grains of rice – the money to buy it is provided by companies advertising on the site – for correct answers, with 10 grains for each rightanswer.   The rice is distributed through the UN’s World Food Program. According to the Free Rice site, the game “has a custom database containingthousands 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 thousandsof words for students, business people, homemakers, doctors, truck drivers, retired people… everyone!”   About 25,000 people each day die from hunger, according to statistics.