Free Rice is a site that helps one improve their English vocabulary (the first feature/section they rolled). Quite Simple, huh? No - for every word one gets right they donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Programme to help end hunger. The cause itself along with the methodology they employ makes it a huge attraction. I am addicted to the game myself, but the professional commitments do not let me make the most of it.

Thus, I decided to use some of my skills to better use… and developed FRAG - Free Rice Avant Garde.

Frag as per Wikipedia is,

Frag is a computer and video game term originating from the word fragging, a term indicating to kill an unpopular superior officer with a fragmentation grenade. A frag is roughly equivalent to “kill”, with the typical main difference that the player being “fragged” can instantly respawn (play again) in most games, i.e. the “kill” is only temporary

Avant Garde as per Wikipedia is,

Avant-garde means “advance guard” or “vanguard”. The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

Thus, FRAGs is an automated bot that kills the hunger monster, by experimenting with technology where the arena relates to art and culture.

Simply, FRAGs for FreeRice is an automated bot that can play the game on your behalf. It comes with its own memory of answers, but is geared to keep building its memory as and when more questions are added to the game. It can play at a rate of 1 question every 3 seconds, thus accumulating 200 grains of rice every minute, or more than 0.25 million grains per day. Currently, the bot can play the following subjects,

  • Algebra
  • Capitals
  • English Vocabulary
  • Multiplication
  • Paintings
  • Periodic Table

The bot is written in Adobe AIR technology and demonstrates how one can interact between the HTML of a loaded page with ActionScript.

The source code for the bot is available on GitHub. A downloadable binary will be available soon.