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Vocabulary quiz: Free Rice

This vocabulary test is really great? Freerice, unlike a traditional vocab test, has a large dictionary and measures hardness of words by how many people get them right this means it's amazingly good at finding words right on the boundary of what you know, ones you've heard used somewhere, but can't quite place, rather than either being words anyone knows, or common long words, or words so obscure only people in specialist fields know them, or words simply famous for being obscure.

This gives an unfair advantage in the quiz to people who know words from having heard them used in books and conversations with articulate people, rather than people who read dictionaries for fun :) So it suits me.

The questions are tailored to your responses, after a few minutes finding their own level at a category of words you know 3/4 of. I could play all day.

Also, it (apparently) raises advertising revue, from which it donates to charity.

This morning, I got up to level 45/50 before starting getting them wrong. What do you get?

Geography quiz: Statetris

There've been many geography quizes going round that ask if you can place countries in europe, but this is so cool because it's Tetris!

Each country falls from the north, and you have to manoeuvre it into position. There's some clues, for instance, it has to be one of the ones on the bottom.

In the easy level the country is labelled. In intermediate, it isn't. In hard, it needs to be rotated to the correct orientation.

It's really satisfying because when you've completed all-but-one, the last country is Russia, which is really big, and really obvious, so it's such a release to be able to plonk it down with a thunderous crash to finish the level.

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http://users.livejournal.com/vitriol_/

I spent about ten minutes playing FreeRice this morning, and leveled out around 44ish (though there were some lucky guesses in that). It's endorsed by the WFP, so it's presumably relatively legit when it comes to its donations.

cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com

though there were some lucky guesses in that

Oh, me too. I don't see any reason to exclude them, they might be subconscious knowledge :)

Some of the most interesting I got right actually *where* from guessing it was related to another word, rather than the word itself.

it's presumably relatively legit when it comes to its donations.

Ah, thank you. I had assumed so, but hadn't actually confirmed it or anything, (and didn't want to imply I had, when so many links have unsupportable content.)

It's funny, there's no human way to leave it unspecified, I did the best I can, but if I'd simply said they did, it would imply I was endorsing that as fact, and if I said they "say" they did, it would sound like I didn't believe them :)

rjw76

I am feeling insufferably smug because I made it to level 50 within 15 minutes :D

This is mostly due to my knowledge of Latin and Greek rather than having actually seen the words before, though.

woodpijn.livejournal.com

Yay, FreeRice.

It is very impressive in that the level of challenge is "just right".

I can get up to 50 with great difficulty, mostly based on etymological knowledge and lucky guesswork.

It does repeat itself after a while, and sometimes I can remember what the answer was last time.

Oh wow. The FAQ said that was impossible; I'm impressed.

This is mostly due to my knowledge of Latin and Greek rather than having actually seen the words before, though.

But I think that's right, it's true in real life too. I only survived because I could often guess correctly based on what sort of compound I thought the word might be, and possible cognates of parts of it, and some background knowledge just makes that a lot more effective.

Of course, it depends *exactly* what it's testing. You'd know enough to be able to read the word in context and know what it meant, but not necessarily enough to use it with precision and get all the connotations right. That would be a different test, with more precise definitions, but the other is obviously what's meant here.

It is very impressive in that the level of challenge is "just right".

Yes. I was in love :) And congratulations, I'm impressed -- see what I said to Rosy.

vyvyan.livejournal.com

I played this for a while the other week. I got it up to 50 and mostly kept it there, but after about 2000 grains of rice the words began repeating :-(

I just tried it again and got from scratch to level 50 in 2 minutes.

stephdairy.livejournal.com

Your links are broken due to a lack of http://.

(S)

Doh, thank you. Edited.

:)

Though lets not get a quickest-to-50 competition :)

IIRC it first calibrates you with a small number of questions designed to place you approximately (though I don't know how high that goes) so you start of about 40, and then have to climb to 50.

but after about 2000 grains of rice the words began repeating :-(

Yeah. It looks only a month old, hopefully if it's popular they'll be able to expand the dictionary.

miriammoules.livejournal.com

It's great if you play scrabble. I learnt pawky today, which is huge scrabble points for a non-7 word

liv

Freerice is good fun. I usually hover around 48 with occasional surges to 49 or 50. I do like the balance, particularly the fact that the hard words are not all Latinate technical terms (and thus transparent to someone with a classical education but utterly obscure to everyone else). It does repeat a bit after a while, but otherwise it's very well thought out.

d37373.livejournal.com

Some of the 'hard' ones seem easy to me, and some of the easy ones hard. Given how quickly a well-designed feedback system can stabalize, I'd guess that's because my background knowledge is different from the average user.

What would be really interesting is to do proximity/clustering analysis on the data and see if any significant groups come up. You could also do a Netflix Prize style calculation to predict the dificulty more accurately.

And it's fun, and educational :)

I'd guess that's because my background knowledge is different from the average user. What would be really interesting is to do proximity/clustering analysis on the data and see if any significant groups come up.

Yeah, I was wondering something like that. Do you hazard a guess which group you were in?

For that matter, I wonder, if one's vocabulary knowledge was uncorrelated to level, what level you'd reach? I guess, if you know if you knew more than 3/4 of the words used you'd drift up, and fewer, down, but it'd likely yoyo up and down a lot.

Some of the 'hard' ones seem easy to me, and some of the easy ones hard.

Come to think of it, I know what you mean, except that most vocab tests seem to be like that but much more so -- the words almost always are ones I know, which are easy, or ones I don't, which are impossible, and I'm surprised by the prevalence of both. This, while not perfect, and not calibrated for some vocabularies, managed to make me often think "Hmm, that's tricky, but I think..." so it actually felt hard rather than lucky :)

And it's fun, and educational :)

:)

Depends on how fell-formed and how large the clusters were. These things can put things into strange categories! My uninformed guess would be that the groups would be science/arts, latin/greek root(in a big enough sample probably sorting by the word's root language group and/or native language). Also scattered along a 'rarity' line and by age of words. The age of the words would matter even more for slang, and you'd probably get social/ethnic groupings as well.

I guess I would be Science + Greek + new + young adult + UK middle class. I am a fairly stereotypical internet denzien - although with enough data you might even find out about my forays into ancient history and the social sciences.

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