Given the rice industry's importance to our region, it's only fitting that I plug the website FreeRice.com.

According to the UN World Food Programme:

"FreeRice is the latest brainchild of US online fundraising pioneer John Breen, who first tied funds to clicks on the Web in 1999 with the Hunger Site, at the time, a WFP partner. Breen runs the Poverty.com website, a portal for information and facts about hunger and related diseases. FreeRice relies on private companies’ ad space payments to underwrite donations to WFP."

Despite my Scrabble playing interest, I tried playing the FreeRice vocabulary game and quickly determined that my vocabulary is less than stellar. And that's a kind description.

So check out FreeRice.com, help raise money to alleviate poverty, and tell me if you're hovering better than my 40 vocab level, which I only reached and maintained after a few guesses.

Today's Scrabble word is asperity, or harshness.