When the United Nations World Food Program (UNWFP) launched a harmless Internet game six months ago, little did they know their innovation would succeed in generating nearly 21 billion grains of rice - enough to feed 1.1 million people for one day.

Aptly named "FreeRice", the game's an interactive vocabulary type that allows every player 20 grains of rice for every correct answer. The moneys raised through advertising are used to underwrite rice donations.

A simple yet iconic solution to help feed the world's hungry children - not to mention it's educational quotient in terms of helping people (children included) vastly improve their vocabularies -- a task to which innumerable schools and nurseries around the globe are atleast partially dedicated.

Statistics reveal that the game is so popular that almost between 3 lac and 5 lac people play it every day. No wonder it's generated as much as 21 billion grains of rice for the World Food Program.

As regards the beneficiaries of this aid, the first comprised refugees from Myanmar taking shelter in Bangladesh. The next batch will be distributed amongst Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. Among other beneficiaries have been Ugandan school children and pregnant and nursing mothers in Cambodia.

The game's creator, John Breen, preened that he'd never imagined that things would move this fast or that the game would be such a success. Breen elaborated that quite apart from the actual amount of rice generated, "FreeRice" is a fantastic way of spreading the message about world hunger.

Meanwhile, a new audio function has been introduced to the game that lets players hear how words are pronounced. Breen said a team of lexographers is working to expand the database of 10,000 words. And that to add to the game's appeal to younger and non-native English speakers, there's the facility for visitors to be able to select the level of difficulty.