Have you ever run across the swoopy letters you have to read then type into a box in order to submit an order, send an email, or other computer thing? One of the sources of these puzzles is reCAPTCHA. It works like this: they put a scanned word from a book they are digitizing in a box with another scanned word that has already been scanned and deciphered. You look at the words and type them in the box to submit. That gets you access to whatever you were trying to do (send an email, for instance) and gives the reCAPTCHA folks one more guess at what the undeciphered word is. There is a more in-depth explanation on their Web site, along with a sample of how to do it that you can use again and again and again.…
It’s addictive, at least to a word guy like me. You get scored on your success. So far I’m at around 250 words deciphered, which is nowhere near the 1203 wins out of 7960 plays I’ve accomplished in MacSolitaire. But it feels more productive somehow, don’cha think? By the way, if you get addicted and have to go into rehab, please don’t blame me. It could be that you don’t really have a life…
(6:45 update—I’m at 501. Better get back to solitaire.)
1 comment:
I hadn't realised the extra purpose of Recaptcha before. There's an interesting article on it in Wikipedia too.
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