What is it?
Challenge! is a dashboard widget for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or later that will simply check whether a string of letters is a word or not. This makes it useful in quickly and authoritatively defusing potentially violent arguments arising from disputed plays in word games such as Scrabble® and UpWords™. In that capacity, it serves the exalted purpose of making the world a better place.
Tournament grade lexicon
Challenge! comes with a word list based on the brand new Official Tournament and Club Word List 2nd Edition augmented to include words up to fifteen letters long from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition, making it the definitive source for tournament-level play in North America. Rude words included.
Customizable
The newest tournament word list for North American English is not good enough for you? You play in a different language, you say? You live in the past? Perhaps you like your word game lexica bowdlerized? No problem. By control-clicking on the widget's icon (which, after installation, should be found in ~/Library/Widgets/) and selecting Show Package Contents, you will see the file lexicon.txt, which can be edited or replaced at will. I am hoping to make this process easier for the next version.
Feedback
Challenge! is the work of Orestes Chouchoulas. Feel free to contact me with bug reports, feature requests, and inane banter.
 
The word game adjudicator for your Dashboard.
Now with 100% more qi! free ^ New!
Download for free!
500 kB
  1. ★Updated OWL2 word list now includes QI, ZA, FE, and ZUGZWANG!
  2. ★17,443 pixels individually re-colored by hand for fresher, greener grass sensation!
  3. ★Now features Émigré’s Matrix Script Bold!
  4. ★Glossier easy-wipe finish!
  5. ★Still free!
Version 2.2 enables compatibility with Safari 3.0.2 Beta and Leopard. New!