Thanks for your help,

It looks like so far:
- I can get it to load when the configuration file is cleared out
- It won't let me load a puzzle from the program menu
- It will let me load a puzzle from file manager
- If I close out of the program, the program will not load if I try to run it again

I'm on a n800 on OS2008. Here is the error log from the last time I tried to run it in xterm (I attempted this after closing out of xword and not being let back in):

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/xword", line 2474, in <module>
w = PuzzleWindow(p)
File "/usr/bin/xword", line 1417, in __init__
self.do_open_file(self.last_file)
File "/usr/bin/xword", line 1477, in do_open_file
self.notify("Opened puzzle '" + self.puzzle.title + "'")
File "/usr/bin/xword", line 1552, in notify
hildon.hildon_banner_show_information(self.win, None, msg)
TypeError: hildon_banner_show_information() argument 2 must be string, not None