Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Ten grains of rice at a time (Day 20: Ultimate Blog Challenge)

I have never been a gaming enthusiast. Neither on the computer nor on the cell phone. Jumping into fantasy lands to rescue lost princesses or retrieve treasure or oversee the quarrels of hot-tempered birds is not my thing. But there is one solitary online game that I am partial to.

Hosted on the website, www.freerice.com, this game, set up in October 2007, supports the United Nations Food Programme. The website requires you to answer a series of questions. Every right answer nets you 10 grains of rice. For every wrong answer, you get nothing.

You can choose your subject. Questions are asked on English (vocabulary and grammar), Chemistry (Symbols), Geography (world landmarks, world capitals, flags of the world, identifying countries on the world map), Science (anatomy), Math (multiplication tables, basic math), Humanities (famous paintings, literature, world hunger, famous quotations), Language Learning (German, Spanish, French, Italian and Latin) and Test Preparation for SAT.

If you were born smart and you’re a whiz at absorbing and retaining knowledge, this is the place for you. You can show off all you like. There is even an FB link to let your friends know about your achievements.

On the other hand, if you’re not the one described in the above paragraph, even better. You can go about relearning all that you forgot the day after the exams. The Multiple Choice format makes it easy on you and there are no penalties for answering a question incorrectly.

As your pile of rice increases, so does your sense of achievement. This sense of satisfaction comes of knowing that you are answering right and that of knowing that your intelligence, knowledge or even your skill at making the right guesses is doing some good to needy persons far away.

Each question, as it loads, brings you face to face with a new sponsor banner just beneath the question. Unlike, say YouTube, it doesn’t require you to sit through the ad before getting a shot at answering the question. Also, every right answer gets you a harder question. Every wrong answer, an easier question. If only all exams worked this way!

Considering that the prices of almost anything in the world are on the up and up, you need have no fear about the value of your pile diminishing in the face of rising inflation. Any increase in the cost of the rice does not affect the total amount you have earned. Since players earn grains of rice, and not units of any currency, the amount that you have earned remains the same.

Incidentally, there are 48 grains of rice in a gram, so the site informs us. It goes on to say that in countries where rice is a staple part of the diet, the World Food Programme provides on average, about 400 gm or rice per person per day. That covers both meals, and of course, the meal also includes other ingredients to help a person get a minimum of 2100 kilocalories per day.

The background of the site shows paddy fields with the rice swaying in the wind. The whole site is in varied shades of green, making the whole appear rather soothing to the eye. Make haste and check out the site for yourself, and while you’re at it, increase your brain power and take urgent steps toward solving the hunger problem of the world -- ten grains of rice at a time.




9 comments:

  1. Wow! That looks great! I'd go to that link and see if I can try my hand at 10 grains of rice at a time...wow!! You made my heart warm with this...I'd do it!

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  2. Wow! This is so very interesting! I am surely going to check this out! Hope they have an app for android too! Thanks for sharing it :)

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  3. Hi, Kajal, Please rush as soon as possible to the site. I promise you, it'll be fun. It can get addictive though. But all for a good cause.

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  4. HI, Shilpa, I checked, but I couldn't find an app for android. But do try it on your comp.

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  5. I checked this site and it is awesome! I collected a lot of rice in a short span of time. Have bookmarked it and will check it out whenever possible on laptop. An app for the phone would had been wonderful (but it would have made me an addict too :D. Yeah, as you said, it is not there!!

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  6. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, Shilpa. I hope you opened your free account with them. That way you can track how much rice you earn.

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  7. the rice that we collect is given to a needy person somewhere? that sounds good.

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  8. I am always up for these knowledge building games. They excite me a lot. And the cheat code is there, do it a couple of times bound to get some questions back!

    Richa

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