Quick vocab quiz: “indigence” means: a) ten years b) poverty c) carving d) outlaw

Sounds like a frightening flashback to the SATs, but it’s actually a question from freerice.com, the intellectual and philanthropic equivalent to tetris or that game on myspace where you match the celebrity’s head to her body. On freerice.com, each vocab question that you get right donates 20 grains of rice to the UN world food program (no rice is taken away for words you miss, and they’re repeated until you get them right.) Perfect for parents tricking their kids into extra study time, SAT-crammers and anyone interested in ending indigence (otherwise known as “poverty”) worldwide. Caroline Treadway, ele’s photographer, and I spent 20 minutes huddled over her iphone playing the game on a recent night at Bacaro, vocab nerds that we are, blissfully ignoring everyone else at the bar.