My wife, who has a bigger vocabulary than I have, achieved a perfect vocabulary level of 55 and sent me a screen shot to prove it:

One secret to success is to set up the options to save your score so that you don’t have to start over each time. Another secret to success is to be persistent, because you’ll learn the words you need to achieve a high score.

I haven’t had the time recently to attempt a perfect score, but eventually I’ll get around to trying.

[5-Jul-2008] Five more levels were added in May, 2008, so now the top possible score is 60.

The premise is simple. The site presents a word and four possible meanings, and you click on the meaning you think is correct. With each correct guess, you earn 20 grains of rice that the site owner donates to the United Nations World Food Program. Advertisers pay to display ads on the site, so they are the ones who ultimately pay for the donated rice. The game is fun and addictive, and it has the benefit that you can learn some new words.

As a scientist, I have a pretty large vocabulary, so I can reach a vocabulary score of 48. My wife, who edits medical textbooks and consequently has an enormous vocabulary, routinely reaches 53. A score of 55 is the highest possible.

I have learned some new words, some useful and some not. When someone mentions they wore a rebato trimmed with vair, now I know what they’re talking about.

But one of the words hit my hot button. The word was nostoc, and the required answer was blue-green alga. This annoys me because it is like calling a dolphin a fish, a mushroom a plant, or water an element. The answer is incorrect.

What were once called blue-green algae are properly called cyanobacteria. The distinction is important, because cyanobacteria are prokaryotic organisms and algae are eukaryotic organisms.

While I’m ranting: It’s one alga, many algae; one bacterium, many bacteria.