X Words Deluxe

This is the later Carbonised line of Freeverse's X-Words Deluxe, the Macintosh crossword/word-tile board game by Andrew Trevorrow. Where the earlier 1.x release ran on System 6 and 68k Macs, the 2.x and 3.x branches were rebuilt for Carbon to keep the game alive across the Classic-to-OS X transition while preserving the original feature set.

What it is

Mechanically, X-Words Deluxe is unchanged from the original 1.x line: a Scrabble-style word board with nine skill levels, multiple boards and scenarios, customisable computer opponents and per-character wordlists. The Carbon rebuilds matter because they were how Mac shareware crossword fans kept playing without booting Classic mode, and how Freeverse extended the game's commercial life into the OS X era.

Versions in this branch

Three releases sit under this nid: 2.1 (2001) built against Carbon for Mac OS 9.x and early OS X; 2.2 (2003) extending Carbon support back to Mac OS 8.6 alongside 9 and X; and 3.1 (2005), a Mac OS X-native build. All retain the original word-list pipeline and downloadable definitions dictionary, so wordlists prepared for the 1.x line continue to load.

Relation to the 68k/early-PPC entry

The companion archive entry x-words-deluxe (nid 10484) holds the original 1.x fat-binary releases (1995, 1997, 1998). They are the same game and the same author; this entry just catalogues the Carbonised family separately because the system requirements, packaging and OS targets diverge sharply. Anyone running Mac OS 8.6 or newer should generally prefer this branch.

Publisher and licence

Developed by Andrew Trevorrow and published by Freeverse, who have since wound down. The game shipped as shareware throughout its life, distributed first via Info-Mac and Freeverse's own site, and is preserved here for historical interest alongside its sister releases.