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How's your vocabulary?

Looking at the totals page, it appears very likely that sometime today, the billionth grain of rice will be donated. That's about 20 metric tons total.

(I feel sorry for the guy who has to count it all out 10 grains at a time, though.)

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
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Averaged between 46 and 47, made it to fifty a couple times; donated about five hundred grains. Cool idea. I might go do it some more.

ETA: yes, veddy British.

EATA: Ever hear the one about putting one grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, doubling every time, how much do you have on the last square? Amusing.
 
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Schneibster said:
Averaged between 46 and 47, made it to fifty a couple times; donated about five hundred grains. Cool idea. I might go do it some more.

ETA: yes, veddy British.

EATA: Ever hear the one about putting one grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, doubling every time, how much do you have on the last square? Amusing.
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Yes. 2 to the 64th power -1. Approximately 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.
Sorry, that's the total.
So the last square would be about half of that.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Don't recall. "Monkey" was the right answer though.
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I don't recall the other choices either, but if you are shown "vervet" and the choices are "type of cloth"," synthetic cheese", "plumbing device" or "monkey", what is the best answer?
 
Jeff Corey said:
Yes. 2 to the 64th power -1. Approximately 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.
Sorry, that's the total.
So the last square would be about half of that.
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9223372036854775808 grains. But the question was how much, not how many- divide by a billion and multiply by 20 metric tons. It's 184,467,440,737.09551616 or 184 billion metric tons. That's about the mass of 2,000 mountains.
 
I tried it again and managed 47, but then screwed up and had to fight hard to get back, but I did find that when one doesn't have a clue what a word means, one can usually eliminate one or two choices just because you know you would have heard it if it meant anything like that, and then that old Latin and French would come in handy for the final guess.

That's not cheating is it?
 
Schreibster,
"How much" may mean "How many", especially if you are referring to such entities as grains of rice, which are known to vary in weight. The variation between the long grain, short grain and extremely tiny grain rice can be considerable. So, in the interest of scientific precision, we must only consider the sheer number, not the weight, of the rice grains.
 
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Currently playing, 560 grains and I seem to hover around 38. Made 40 a few times though.

It's funny how you can figure out some of those words.

I managed to get dulcinea, which means 'sweetheart' simply by remembering a war poem with a similar sounding word. Now I don't know if I will ever use it in real life though. Damnnation to my laconic choice of vocabulary.
 
I hovered around 47/48 most of the time, with occasional drops to 44, and hit 50 a couple of times.

A passing knowledge of etymology certainly helps.
 
Schneibster said:
LOL, OK, you got me. Maybe it's only 1,000 mountains. :D
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Mountains? That's a farkin scientific measure? Around here, we got "mountains of garbage" about 300 feet above sea level. North of here we got Mount Monadnock, which is less then a mile high. North of that, we got Mt Washington, which is higher, I know, I climbed it.
So if you want a serious discussion of this grains of rice thing, you must define your terms or else I will be forced to enlist the services of my good friend Claus Larsen (not kidding) to make you show your evidence.
 
Wildy said:
Currently playing, 560 grains and I seem to hover around 38. Made 40 a few times though.

It's funny how you can figure out some of those words.

I managed to get dulcinea, which means 'sweetheart' simply by remembering a war poem with a similar sounding word.
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Also, Cervantes, for me.
 
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Jeff Corey said:
I don't recall the other choices either, but if you are shown "vervet" and the choices are "type of cloth"," synthetic cheese", "plumbing device" or "monkey", what is the best answer?
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True, but the implication of the site was that "vervet" was a synonym for "monkey" which is definitely not true.

wollery said:
A passing knowledge of etymology certainly helps.
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Absolutely! I guessed a number of words based purely on etymological grounds.
 
fuelair said:
Hanging in 46-49. Will build a vocab - though largely of uncommon words!!
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On a second run, I notice that there are many repeats - sometimes with the answer order changed, sometimes not. One of the words came up three times during last nights' run (3,000 + grains) - though there were also non-repeats. I assume it is pulling randomly from a base of, at most, 200 to 300 words given that level of repetition But new ones still coming up.:)
 
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