Play online for a good cause

Gas gets most of the attention here in this country, but the record-high price of rice has been causing hunger, hoarding and even rioting around the globe.

You can help — and you can do it by procrastinating.

Instead of playing Minesweeper or solitaire, go to FreeRice.com. The nonprofit humanitarian site poses a multiple-choice game matching words and definitions. Each correct answer puts 20 grains of rice in a player’s on-screen bowl. More important, it sends 20 real grains of rice to the United Nations’ World Food Program for distribution.

Know what “palliation” means? How about “ternary,” “opprobrious” or “pelerine?” Those are some of the words that popped up on the screen during a recent game session. Other challenge words are not as difficult, however.

It was created by John Breen, a computer programmer from Indiana who takes no money from it and also created the sites www.poverty.com and rainforestsite.com.

Breen estimated recently that 300,000 to 500,000 people play FreeRice each day.

Playing that online game is leading to huge donations of rice for the world’s hungry, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP), which is based in Rome.