Keilly: April 2007

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Scrabble Dictionary Widget



Travel Scrabble is a great game when on holiday, but carrying the dictionary is a pain. So I cooked up a scrabble dictionary widget while on a cross country flight (you do take your laptop on holiday right?)

It's the simplest thing ever, just type in the word and press enter and you'll see a red or green indicator.

It uses the freely available word lists for SOWPODS or TWL. SOWPODS is the valid British English and American English word lists combined; TWL is the North American word list for 2006; you can choose on the widget back which, or both, to use.

Depending on where you live Scrabble is the trademark of Hasbro or Mattel. Using the Scrabble name for anything is a legal minefield. So I decided to call the widget the incredibly dull "SOWPODS/TWL Word Checker"

Download Word Checker Widget
OS X 10.5 Compatible (10.4 tested version here)

Thanks to Andy Isaacson for tweaking the text clearing behaviour.