This is a game in which you get a word and then choose its correct synonym. For each word you get right, the advertiser at the bottom of the page pays for ten grains of rice. There are fifty different levels of difficulty in the game, starting from English beginners all the way to words that challenge even university professors. My advice to you: unless you're trying to boost your ego, don't use a dictionary or Google. You get the ten grains no matter what the difficulty level. If you do as I did and use that bloody dictionary, you get stuck on words from level 47 to 50. Sure, I learned a few words I'm going to try to get in my school essays just for the sake of showing off (or to say publicly that I would like to go ans see an ecdysiast one day..), but it's nicer if you have your own level and can actually think for yourself and acquire a higher level of vocabulary.
My score today: two thousand grains.
Oh, and by the way: how many of you had katzenjammer this morning? I didn't. =)
4 kommenttia
millikan
19.11.2007 15:07
Did come across that site a while ago, and without using dictionary my difficulty level was close to 40 (after which apparently the difficulty rises fast, because native speakers with decent vocabulary get around 42-45).
And several of those words were such that whoever uses them in everyday conversation should be shot :)
Splenetic
20.11.2007 11:53
I tried it again last night, hopping between 25 and a bit above 30. But I appeal to the mitigating factor: the assumption that when I have to be conscious of a situation in which I am to know tricky vocabulary I panic and therefore my synapses refuse to work as fluently as when I don't have to think about the difficulty level of the words I'm using... And I was listening to HIM. What do you mean I'm coming up with excuses? ;)
And no they shouldn't be shot! It's so much fun to squeeze in a weird word every now and then. =)
millikan
21.11.2007 17:02
RPGs have helped me develop some obscure vocabulary, words like "antediluvian"...and of course knowing some french helps.
And that shooting comment came to mind when seeing a word which meant "oily", only it was something like five or six syllables long...
Splenetic
25.11.2007 14:23
Antediluvian... one more word to squeeze in an essay to create question marks and an underlining from a ceertain red pen. =)
I noticed knowing Latin was useful, too.