GDN: Fresno Declared the Winner of Ubisoft’s “Great American Word Challenge”

Ubisoft announced Fresno, CA, as the winner of the “Great American Word Challenge” (www.greatamericanwordchallenge.com), a nationwide online contest that pit cities against one another to measure their greatness, not by the height of their skyscrapers, but by the depth of their vocabularies. Fresno received the highest cumulative average score and took the title and the prize: a Ubisoft donation of My Word Coach video games and Nintendo DS™ systems to a local family literacy center selected by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL). The beneficiary organization is the Fresno County Library Literacy Services Center, which provides free reading, writing, spelling, and math tutoring to Fresno County adults that cannot read or write English.

“The city of Fresno is always proud to support family literacy,” said Deputy Mayor Jeff Eben. “We are excited to have won the ’Great American Word Challenge’ and thank all Fresno’s residents who participated so successfully in this fun and creative Challenge.”

With thousands of contestants putting their vocabulary skills to the test since November 1, 2007, the “Great American Word Challenge” proved which American cities could walk the walk AND talk the talk:

-- In addition to Fresno, the following cities rounded out the top four positions:

-- Salisbury, Maryland (2nd place)

-- Mankato, Minnesota (3rd place)

-- Albuquerque, New Mexico (4th place)

-- Oakland, California (5th place)

-- Overall, the U.S. received a B- average grade on their vocabulary with a national average score of 167 out of 205 (81%)

-- And here’s how long-time city rivals stacked up:

-- Oakland is the smartest Bay Area city, beating out San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Jose!

-- Despite preliminary results showing Brooklyn in the lead, at final count Manhattan is the highest-scoring New York City borough. The Bronx is the lowest-scoring borough. Here’s how the boroughs stacked up against each other:

1. Manhattan

2. Queens

3. Brooklyn

4. Staten Island

5. The Bronx

-- Twin Cities? Not exactly. Minneapolis established itself as the more literate of the two, scoring 168 compared to St. Paul’s 140.

-- Good (and smart) things come in small packages: Pasadena might be just an eighth the size of its sprawling neighbor, Los Angeles, but it’s 16% smarter! Pasadena scored 178 compared to Los Angeles, which scored a mere 154.

The Challenge, which was developed in partnership with the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL), launched Nov. 1, 2007, in celebration of National Family Literacy Month (November) and the debut of Ubisoft’s My Word Coach, a video game for the Wii™ system and Nintendo DS that anyone can play to improve vocabulary and increase confidence in verbal expression.

The “Great American Word Challenge” was designed to bring attention to the importance of family literacy while generating a sense of fun and excitement around the cause.

“We’re thrilled that we were able to engage thousands of Americans to improve their vocabularies with the Great American Word Challenge,” said Sharon Darling, the president and founder of NCFL. “We’re very excited for our local Fresno NCFL chapter to receive Ubisoft’s generous donation of My Word Coach games and Nintendo DS’. They will be a terrific tool for improving literacy among the families in the Fresno community.”

Everyone who played the “Great American Word Challenge” was entered to win a Grand Prize trip for two to Washington, D.C., as well as the chance to win one of two Wii systems awarded each month for the duration of the contest.