I'm sure you've all heard of this, but it was new to me.

http://www.freerice.com/

It's a simple game. It presents a word, and you just have to select from the 4 multiple choice options what the word means. Even if you don't care about the food donation aspect, it's fun to see a lot of interesting words that don't get a lot of play. Of course, the ones I have come across I didn't bother to look up before, so I'm just guessing at their meaning from the vague recollection of their context, or from what I think might be their root. It's pretty amazing how often you can be right, really.

I've only been to level 43, the same as my friend who passed on the link. With his wife's help, they were able to get to 45. I'm sure several of you could do better.

I liked the "axiomatic = self-evident" !
We could start using that when new posters ask for the differences between speaker brands: The choice is axiomatic!

Good link!

Gee, thanks Charles! I pretty much wasted the better part of my workday with this.

Topped out at 45.

I hit 47, but I seem to be in free fall now.

Yeah, it's pretty quick to humble you--just when you think things are going good.

Got it up to 48, and by the time I stopped I was hovering between 44 and 46.

I got up to 49 and then hovered like Ken...

Wow, you got 49? I'm impressed. I'll have to give it another go tomorrow.

Anyone know what the numbers actually mean? I looked through the site, but didn't find anything.

Oh, they go up to 50 in levels of difficulty. It says even people with huge vocabularies usually top out at 48.

The numbers, they do NOTHING!

Aw c'mon! At least give me this small victory. I am still stung by my abysmal performance on the infamous "mechanical aptitude test." I think my computer actually laughed at me.

Well that's where my rusty Latin and Greek come in handy... You can pretty much figure out the meaning of most words, I don't claim to know all those big words!

Exactly--unfortunately, I never had any formal training in either language.

Ditto. I think it does help that English is my second language (after Polish),that I was pretty much fluent in Spanish when I was in the 3rd grade -- I lived in Venezuela for 4 months -- and that I took German for 4 years in high school plus a semester in college.

That being said, I only played until I reached 42.

I will admit to ranging from 37-41 in the few minutes that I played. You know, this is not helping out my pledge to minimize my computer use at work. Dammit.

topped out at 40 after a few minutes. After that I had to start guessing and it was all down hill....

Who uses these words anyway :p

Sesquipedalians.

Back in my acting days, they used to call me Tripod ...

It was because you were slow to use, steady and predictable....

And here I thought it was because I was the Phallic Sesquipedalic.

I love word origins.