Call it FreeRice2: The Next Generation. Yes, it’s yet another highly addictive way to murder all your free time. But if you took the bait when a man named Tom responded to my previous post about FreeRice, then you know what I mean. You too wound up at Answer4Earth and found you were unable to tear yourself away from this new quiz game.
The cause, this time, is environmentalism, and while the questions still include vocabulary puzzlers, they also include general knowledge. Every right answer nets you virtual leaves, which add up to branches and eventually to trees – which leads to actual trees getting planted, all as a result of your pastiming. Nifty, eh? Near as I can tell this is legitimate; I scoured the web for demurring opinions about the hosting organization and so far the only complaints refer to how quickly you can drop a half hour or more whilst playing the game.
What’s not to like? You learn some things (who knew that the courting ritual of the Madagascar hissing cockroach involves mutual antennae stroking?); you contribute to reforestation; and you get to compete with your archnemesis (that would be yourself, toots).
Plus the site’s creators evince a droll sense of humor. Just today, a question about which body Washington crossed for the Battle of Trenton included among the possible responses……Lake Oswego.
