Recently I have been preparing to take the GRE. Since the verbal portion of the exam is little more than a glorified vocabulary quiz, I’ve been searching for ways to practice my vocab skills. During that quest, I discovered www.freerice.com. This not for profit site provides a vocabulary game that donates 20 grains of rice to the U.N. World Food Program for each question that you answer correctly. They pay for this donation by showing advertisements under each question and using the proceeds to buy rice. (But don’t worry, the ads are all quite tasteful and promote good causes.)

After you play for a few minutes, you’ll see your “Best Level” appear. The best that I’ve been able to get is 43, but I expect that some of you can beat me! Go play and then come back and post a comment letting us know how you did.

Best of all, you’ll have fun while combating world hunger – and it will only cost you a few minutes of your time. And if you get bored with vocabulary, try changing the subject to famous paintings and see if you can beat Kay’s level 6.

I thought it might be prudent to include a disclaimer about our site. Although I have done my best to design this site to be cross-browser compatible, Internet Explorer is notoriously difficult to program for. Consequently, there are some things that just don’t look right when viewed in Internet Explorer 6. (I can’t say for sure about IE 7, since I don’t have access to test it, but I suspect the problems remain) I suppose that some of you have probably experienced this already. For the best viewing experience, I recommend you use a Mozilla based browser (such as Firefox) or Apple’s Safari. You’ll be able to enjoy the full design of our site; and besides, the world will be better off with one fewer Internet Explorer user!

One other note: we sent invitations to all of the email addresses that had signed up for our old website newsletter. Some of you may want a separate account for other members of your family (so, e.g., you can both comment with separate user names). If this is the case, just send us an email and we will send you a link to create an additional account. Note: Each account must have an unique email address.

If there are other friends or family that you think would like to view our site, please refer them to family.kaykotter.com where they can contact us to request an account.